EXPERIENCE 252 | Big Bears in the House! - A Conversation with John Palke, Owner of BBP Realty, Partner in Big Bear Properties, and a Lender with Edge Home Finance

John Palke and I were introduced at a Realities for Children event some months back, and when we finally enjoyed a coffee together, I knew he had a story that I had to dig into and share! In real estate since 2019, John had previously been a commercial fisherman in Alaska (where he once fell in the water and nearly froze to death), was a partner in one of my favorite band bars, Hodi’s Half Note, and worked in operations at Vestas - until he realized giant windmills were a mostly a heavily subsidized boondoggle.  

After getting into real estate with a name-brand firm, John became a partner in a property management business, Big Bear Properties.  During the refi boom, he referred a full-time income worth of mortgages to a friend - who  encouraged to become a licensed mortgage broker - allowing him to provide full-service real estate for investors - or a la carte for anyone!   In 2025, he decided to go his own way in real estate, founding BBP Realty almost exactly a year from when this episode was released. 

John’s a great storyteller, and I enjoyed every bit of this conversation - and I think you will too.  So please join me in getting to know and love my new friend John Palke.  

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Music By: A Brother's Fountain

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:36

welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast. I'm here today with John Polke. John is the owner of BBP Realty Big Bear Property Management, and a lender with Edge Home Finance. Hello everybody. Welcome John. Hi. You have a nice radio voice. I

Speaker: 0:53

practiced a bit.

Speaker 2: 0:54

Did you, were you like practicing in front of the mirror and stuff? Like how did

Speaker: 0:58

Uh, no, I didn't practice. I didn't practice this time. Oh. Just over the years. Like you got a lot of time in front of a microphone too. I have, yeah. Uh, through various different things, but, well, we can talk about it. I took a, uh, I took a radio broadcasting class one time. Okay. And I failed it. Um,'cause I,

Speaker 2: 1:16

for lack of

Speaker: 1:16

attendance. For lack of attendance. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:19

Seems like how you would I took a roots of American popular music class, uh, toward the end of my collegiate career. Um, got an a, I think, I don't know, pretty good anyway.'cause I thought it was really interesting. Yeah, yeah. Totally. That sounds, that sounds the cultural appropriation. Um, like they celebrated it at the time, like it came from black culture and, you know, blues and all this and stuff. And

Speaker: 1:40

stolen by many, many white Right. The Beatles. Elvis, all that. Elvis, yeah. Especially Elvis. He is.

Speaker 2: 1:47

Probably the number one there in that regard. The king

Speaker: 1:49

of theft of uh, right. Music.

Speaker 2: 1:54

Well, and like, it never would've been amazing without so many more people working on that project. You know, like the seventies, even the eighties with some asterisk and the nineties rock and roll. Those are glory days of creativity.

Speaker: 2:09

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think all of my favorite music, my actual favorite music comes from yeah. Probably sixties through probably mid nineties. Yeah. And then they're a little bit in the late nineties if you go into like the new metal, but

Speaker 2: 2:24

Right.

Speaker: 2:25

Then it really starts to fall off. Yeah. Or it becomes all electronic in jam bands, or there's

Speaker 2: 2:29

little spots here and there that are kind of cool. Right. Yeah. But, but the, it was almost like an arms race. Yeah. Just like the Soviet Union and, and Russia or, and the USA were like competing for who could have the most big nuclear missiles and stuff like that for a while.

Speaker: 2:45

What, between like Seattle and LA and Yeah, kind of. And just

Speaker 2: 2:50

everywhere

Speaker: 2:50

because it was like, LA was huge. Like everybody was trying to

Speaker 2: 2:52

create the best music and then eventually the big production companies. And you know, there's only whatever, seven producers that basically own the most of the. Major label production anymore in the radio station, air airspace.

Speaker: 3:06

If even that, I think one company actually owns'em all. Right. Right. And

Speaker 2: 3:10

there's two companies that own all the radio stations now. Right. You know, and so they're the deciders of who gets the airtime, who gets to play. Yeah. Uh, and so you don't have that same kind of arms race, man, I saw of trying to make better music. You know, you wanna be famous, you would better make music as good as Led Zeppelin or damn near, oh shit, I better practice more.

Speaker: 3:29

Those are pretty big boots.

Speaker 2: 3:30

Well, whatever.

Speaker: 3:31

Um, the, I saw a thing today that there are like three companies that own all of the music festivals too. Really? All of the major music festivals are owned by like, not surprising corporate things. And Yeah. So they're, they're talking about when that kind of falls apart, when the, well, no. Alright. When or if, when, when, when. Well, there's gonna be, you know, like they say, there's, there's gonna be a downturn in a lot of these things, especially in like the, uh, the economy. And then the economy will affect the music industry as a direct result. And then all of those companies. So it's a good time to, to stay indie and uh, just keep pushing forward like that. This is what they're saying.

Speaker 2: 4:16

I was talking about that somebody this last week, I guess at some point, just that evolution of. Like it used to be you toured so you could sell CDs. Mm-hmm. And then in the span of just a few years, like the sale of CDs dried up into nothing. So you put on an album, so you had like an excuse to tour Right. And sell tickets so you could try to make some money. Yeah. Um, and, but that's, it's harder and harder to drag, you know, unless you're U2 or something. It's harder and harder to drag people out of their comfortable little houses with unlimited entertainment at the touch of a fingertip in their living room where they prefer to be.

Speaker: 4:50

Yeah. Concerts are still selling out. It. They are just depends on who they are. Yeah. Um, but it's all owned

Speaker 2: 4:56

by the same few

Speaker: 4:57

folks.

Speaker 2: 4:58

Yeah. You know? Yeah, totally. And so music was historically such an individually creative thing, or a few people would get together or whatever. Yeah. You know, and now it's kind of all coming through a few select pipelines.

Speaker: 5:11

Right. It's being fed to you through Yeah, through ads and through, uh, reels and like Right. Social media and all the, like these stupid new channels that like they just pump all this crap at you and then you, you, you put it behind, you put this song behind your reel and then it spreads because of that. Yeah. And that's, and you got, like, they say that like any good song now you really only have to have like one minute max. Of like a good part of the song. Interesting. Because it's only gonna be used in the real, nobody heard more. Interesting. And then also attention span. People skip music so much.

Speaker 2: 5:45

Oh, well. So, so this weekend my wife and I were watching like a name, the song by the intro

Speaker: 5:51

mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: 5:52

Of nineties music thing. And you had just a few seconds and you had to try to name the artist and the song. Wait,

Speaker: 5:56

were you watching name that tune this weekend?

Speaker 2: 5:58

Well, it wasn't name that tune, but it was a YouTube kind of thing. Right. Like similar. And we're hosting a student, Sarah from Italy, and, and then she came out for the last half of that, and then just kind of a less, more, uh, famous clip than the intro. And she was like, probably better than both of us. And she attributed it all to, um, TikTok. Yeah. And so is she watching TikTok but with other people, like singing along to these old classic nineties hits and stuff? Or how, what, how does she know All these seventies, eighties, nineties hits. Yeah. And sometimes even the artist and stuff, is it just a clip of them playing this song in concert for They do that 25

Speaker: 6:43

seconds? There's a lot of that. So if you like follow like anybody in Instagram page, like you'll see, like they do a clip of their, they do a reel or they, they do a TikTok. Yeah. Is it called just a TikTok? I don't, I guess, I don't know. I've actually, I don't have a

Speaker 2: 6:55

TikTok, so

Speaker: 6:56

I had a TikTok and I tried to sign it. Somebody sent me something the other day and it said that I've been banned from TikTok. Oh. Yeah. So, which is okay'cause it was like the third time that I've ever tried to sign into it. So if I'm, do you have an idea

Speaker 2: 7:11

of why you got banned?

Speaker: 7:12

Uh, no. I was probably drunk and I probably spouted off something.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Who knows? Like, you recorded yourself, like those fucking, I don't know, people that wanna buy a house and they think they're gonna get a house in Fort Collins for less than$400,000. They might as well suck by. Yeah, it probably

Speaker: 7:27

was something like that. It probably wasn't a real estate post, it was probably anti-establishment of some sort.

Speaker 2: 7:33

I, uh, I had a reel that was anti-establishment the other day where I, I went on a motorcycle ride and I got my picture taken by another one of those cameras that light up, you know, right after the, the dangerous part of the road is, and when the road opens up and the speed limit should change. Mm-hmm. But then you get your picture taken because it hasn't changed

Speaker 4: 7:52

yet. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:53

So I parked my ambulance camper, like right behind that car for a couple of hours when I came back from a motorcycle ride. Just as a, as a bit of a protest. Yeah. That's awesome. And there's a person sitting in that car the whole time. Oh, the whole time. Yeah. It's ridiculous.

Speaker: 8:08

I know. I see them in there and like it, it must a little, apparently they

Speaker 2: 8:11

make enough money. Snapping people's pictures for speeding in a not dangerous area because the dangerous area just went, got done.'cause that's why I'm speeding up bitches. Uh, it's a little white to cover their salary. The little white

Speaker: 8:24

Jeeps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And speaking of TikTok, they're probably just sitting in there like watching, looking at social media, staring at social media

Speaker 2: 8:30

media. And it's a company outta Arizona, I'm told, okay. That the city of Fort Collins contracts with to, I guess, raise revenue, but like how much is left after paying the insurance and depreciation on that SUV and this person's whatever,$25 or an hour wage for sitting in their fucking around on TikTok. I mean, and then the house in Arizona gets some of the money too, presumably. And then Fort Collins gets almost nothing but they squeeze our citizens for a bunch of money for not protecting public safety well, but

Speaker: 9:02

when the money from the tickets go to our county, I guess, or the court here. But still

Speaker 2: 9:09

it must, it must pencil out. So, not that

Speaker: 9:11

I'm trying to defend that, but it

Speaker 2: 9:12

must pencil out that Fort Collins makes some money.

Speaker: 9:14

Right?

Speaker 2: 9:14

But how much do they have to gross for Fort Collins to make money after paying for this truck, paying for this dumb woman to sit inside there looking all uncomfortable?'cause I'm parked my ambulance behind her.

Speaker: 9:25

That's pretty

Speaker 2: 9:26

awesome.

Speaker: 9:26

Anyway, that's actually a pretty sweet move.'cause I've definitely thought about. Um, I've thought about taking my BB gun and just getting one little, one little hole in the window. When I got that ticket, when I got my one ticket from that, oh, I've got

Speaker 2: 9:39

five in the last 12 months. Really?

Speaker: 9:41

Yeah, because there's So they have them on

Speaker 2: 9:43

Prospect or Yeah. No, on Shields just south of Prospect. Okay. After it opens up after Prospect, it's like, okay, now all the congestion from the campus has gone. Yeah. But they don't change the speed limit for another block and a half.

Speaker: 9:54

It's kind of funny'cause like Right, and they put a camera

Speaker 2: 9:56

right there before they change the speed limit

Speaker: 9:57

on Taft. There's always a cop car sitting there. Like, it's like right in the same kind of area that you're talking about, just on Taft.

Speaker 2: 10:03

Yeah.

Speaker: 10:04

But there's always a cop car sitting there in front of the elementary school and everybody thinks that that's one of those cars. Right. But it's not.

Speaker 2: 10:09

No, it's just a car parked car.

Speaker: 10:10

It's, yeah, it's a parked car

Speaker 2: 10:13

and that's okay. Yeah. I'm okay with that kind of deception, you know? Yeah. Like slow me down thinking I'm might be right. But these put snap in the photo. These intentional, put the photo picture right after the road opens up. And be slightly before the speed limit opens up. Yeah. It's so annoying.

Speaker: 10:29

My wife loves, loves, loves to run Yellow Lights. And especially the ones at the intersection. I'm terrified. I'm

Speaker 2: 10:39

terrified of running yellow lights.'cause I've gotten a few of those pictures too. Yeah. But I don't like'em, so anyway.

Speaker: 10:46

Yeah, I don't, I actually, I don't run yellow lights just because I almost got into a big accident when I was like, when I was a teenager and I've, I've actually had a fear of them my whole life, so I hardly ever do it if I see such. So what she does

Speaker 2: 10:58

it, when you're riding with her, you're like,

Speaker: 10:59

honey, yeah. Well, no, we cover our faces and I put the, I put the, uh, the, you're putting the visors down the, the sun visor down. Like

Speaker 2: 11:09

when I put the sun visors down, it means I'm very uncomfortable right now. But you're welcome.

Speaker: 11:14

I do it every time. Like I'll do it, I'll do it in my truck. Like when I just, when I go through an intersection that I know has one, I'll do it anyways no matter what. I, I've, that's how you get outta tickets. If they can't see your face, you can say it's, you don't know it's me.

Speaker 2: 11:28

Hmm. Well, I told my wife not to pay this last one and I had my advisor down on my black helmet. On my, yeah, well it wasn't me. I mean, yeah. It wasn't you. It wasn't me. It wasn't you. My friend borrowed my motorcycle Saturday morning last, and then he told me about this ticket bad. So I had to go park my ambulance behind. Yeah,

Speaker: 11:44

he was, he was really irresponsible, that guy. Yeah, he, he was

Speaker 2: 11:49

John. Uh, do you wanna tell. Uh, so, uh, what, what, what you're doing with the, you're, you're like a full services real estate guy. Yeah. For regular people, but also investors.'cause you can help'em get their loan, help'em manage that property and help'em find it.

Speaker: 12:07

Yeah. Or sell it. So, uh, yeah. I, I've been working in real estate for, it's, uh, I think I'm, I think I'm next, I think in January I hit nine years. Okay. Eight or nine, honestly, I don't remember. I probably, did you

Speaker 2: 12:22

start before you got outta ho's?

Speaker: 12:26

Uh, yeah. No, I got, I started, I started a long time after that, so I actually sold out of ho's, uh, like

Speaker 2: 12:34

Oh, it continued on without you for a while.

Speaker: 12:36

10, yeah. 11 years ago, something like that. Okay. And then when

Speaker 2: 12:38

did ho's run until, do you remember

Speaker: 12:40

It went until the pandemic, the COVID season? Yeah. Yeah. My ex partner Dan, he, um. He continued the business until,

Speaker 2: 12:50

okay, COVID. Okay. So you, you sold out your, your stake in it, you had partners in it and then

Speaker: 12:55

Yeah, he, he, he helped me to, uh, get myself a little bit healthy, healthier than I was. Okay. At that point.

Speaker 2: 13:01

Yep.

Speaker: 13:02

And, uh, I went back to school and then started into the wonderful, exciting world of sales. I started off actually selling cars for a little bit, and then I, uh, okay. Then I, uh, was getting my real estate license while I was working for Toyota, and, uh, yeah. So I, I started doing that. And then it seems you really like real estate though. I do. I love real estate. Yeah. Um, I mean, cars wasn't so fun. No. You know, in cars, like, even if you're working at like a good dealership, like you're still, you're hosing people. And I felt bad about some of the deals, and that's

Speaker 2: 13:37

one thing about the kind of the flat 3% or 2% or whatever kind of pricing stuff. With real estate, it's like, here's the price. But in cars, the, the more you bend your customer over, the bigger your paycheck is. Mm-hmm. Every time.

Speaker: 13:50

Yeah. And I mean, the more I help out my client in, in the real estate industry, like sure. If I'm working with a buyer and I get them a better deal, I might make a little bit less money.

Speaker 2: 14:00

Right.

Speaker: 14:01

But then they've got a story to tell. Right. And they'll tell

Speaker 2: 14:03

two people. They do. And lifetime value of that client is way higher.

Speaker: 14:07

Yeah. And that's so much better. And not to mention that, like it typically they're my friend. And I want my friends to get a really good deal and like, I want to help out people. And you, you know, you're in real estate, you're helping people far more than you are in cars.

Speaker 2: 14:22

Right.

Speaker: 14:23

And also there i I

Speaker 2: 14:25

appreciable asset versus depreciable asset. Yeah. And I haven't really looked at,

Speaker: 14:28

at like the full, like, stats on it, but like, I think a lot less people die in house accidents than they do in car accidents. So, you know, maybe it's a safer, safer industry to be in.

Speaker 2: 14:39

So you started as kind of a, a real estate broker, regular everyday real estate broker. Yep. I started working for, for a flag company.

Speaker: 14:45

I worked for Keller Williams. Okay. I started with'em, I was on a team. Um, the team thing wasn't really for me, mostly just'cause it was expensive. Mm-hmm. Um, Keller Williams was an expensive brokerage to work for. You gotta almost

Speaker 2: 14:59

pay them unless you sell a certain amount kind of thing.

Speaker: 15:01

Yeah. There's a, there's a, there's a big time pay to play in real estate. Yeah. And that wasn't something that I was super into. It was great to be a part of like, you know, a big, you know, functioning hive of an office. Sure. But, um, then, uh, we had the opportunity to purchase Big Bear Properties, which is my, our property management company. Okay. That I own with, with a few other partners. Okay. Um, we had that opportunity, so I moved over, moved my license to that was using that as, we were using that as my real estate brokerage also. Oh, okay. And then we decided it was probably a good idea to have two separate, separate companies. Separate also, like, you know. Big bear properties on a sign is a really is a mouthful. Yeah. BBP just seemed like it was a little bit, yeah. I think how big your stickers would have to be. I know, right? So

Speaker 2: 15:53

John is an unconventional, a free thinker, if you will. And uh, when I first met him at a Realities for Children event, I believe Craig introduced us, um, oh, we got a visual aid here. You had a visual aid. John Pauley, BBP Realty, and then his phone number, not even an email. So I'm putting his contact information into my CRM. I'm like, I don't even know, maybe he's got an email on his, uh, I do have your email now I wanna say,

Speaker: 16:17

oh, you know, I left my wallet. I'm, but I think it's kind of cool. But I do have cards. I also have cards that have my email address and like all the other stuff, all the standard stuff, but I just don't like'em. I like these stickers.

Speaker 2: 16:27

Well, and and in your world, like percentage of communications with your clients, the people that pay you that are via phone or via email?

Speaker: 16:38

Uh, I, there's a, so there's a lot. Okay. So I guess kind of that, that's like

Speaker 2: 16:43

contracts and things like that. Always get email. That's always email inspections, all that kind of stuff. All

Speaker: 16:48

that stuff is all email. Yes. But when I go to networking events or when I hand somebody something, yeah. I don't want to get on their drip campaign, so. Oh, that's brilliant. I don't have my email address on that. All right. For, well, and also like a lot of times like I'll meet somebody. Um, you know, at a show or something like that, and they'll email me something about a property and then, you know, it goes into either spam or it goes into Right. You know, it goes into something where I don't see it too dangerous on the top of my thing,

Speaker 2: 17:18

not catch it.

Speaker: 17:19

And I don't want that to happen either. I was, I was running into that a lot.

Speaker 2: 17:22

Okay.

Speaker: 17:23

And so, yeah, so

Speaker 2: 17:24

I like a, like I said, I like a free thinker where you're like, these are the, these are two things that annoy me. Yeah. Getting on somebody's drip campaign and also, uh, not seeing it when somebody's trying to catch my attention.

Speaker: 17:37

Right. Well, and the other thing is, is, like I said, the third part is that somebody has to call me or text me and ask me for my email address.

Speaker 2: 17:46

Yeah. Boom. There. You got'em. Plus you can stick it on water bottles. You can stick it on bathroom stalls. The bathroom stalls.

Speaker: 17:52

That's my favorite place. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, uh, or

Speaker 2: 17:54

my sticker wall. Just the other side of here. Sticker

Speaker: 17:56

wall on the other side. Um, the, uh, the poles that hold up, uh, ski lifts. Oh yeah. Are the poles that hold up strippers? No, they don't let'em stick. It's not slip. They don't, don't that on that. Plus yours are kind of

Speaker 2: 18:06

high grip here. It's got kind satin finish. Yeah.

Speaker: 18:09

Yeah. I, I, I, I, I spent the big bucks on these ones. So,

Speaker 2: 18:12

so, so you recently started BBP Realty, just to separate that real estate. And do you any, any staff at BBP Realty, or do you want to?

Speaker: 18:21

Um, I've got sort of, I have, uh, I have another realtor. Uh, his name is Joseph r Pascal. Okay. Um, Joey Pascal, he, uh, is working with me. He's hanging his license. He's a new agent. Okay. Um, uh, great kid.

Speaker 2: 18:38

Okay. Um, and did you look out searching for him or he met you somewhere? He is like, I'd sure love to be a part of your team, John. He,

Speaker: 18:45

wait, I think he waited on me and my partner at the restaurant that he works at. Okay. Um, yeah. And, and my partner, actually my partner, uh, uh, Joe Ali. Okay. He, he, uh, he asked him, he started talking to him, and then he was like, Hey, it's like, Hey, I'm, I'm getting my real estate license Yeah. And blah, blah, blah. And he said, well, you should work with us. So, um, and he doesn't know, honestly, I can't even say he didn't know any better. Yeah. Just kidding. Yeah. Well, no, he did, he, he, he actually joined Keller Williams. Okay. So he joined Keller Williams and then. I went back to the restaurant that he worked at, I don't really want to say they're restaurants. Right, right.

Speaker 2: 19:23

Um, a few months later and you're like, Hey, how's it going at Keller? Yeah. And

Speaker: 19:26

he was like, oh my God, they're charging me like 500 bucks and this and that. Yeah. And I, and, and that was my problem with when I worked at Keller Williams is like, they nickel and dime you for everything. Like they charged you. Like, I mean, Keller Williams isn't necessarily a real estate company. It's a place where like they, they, they have all these different avenues to charge you for a million different things and then they upcharge'em. Yeah. Interesting. And yeah, and I don't want to do that. And I told'em, I was like, listen man, like I had that same problem with Keller Williams. I don't want, I don't wanna be that guy. I was like, so, you know, I charge half of what any one of like the, you know, bigger the majors,

Speaker 2: 20:03

whatever do, and you probably, your tech stack isn't quite as voluptuous. No,

Speaker: 20:07

it's definitely not. Your training

Speaker 2: 20:08

program is in process of development.

Speaker: 20:11

We, we, we run pretty trim, but um, yes. I don't have all those different things that you have to like, pay for when you go into subscribe, to subscribe, to be a part of whatever, a company. And they force you into a lot of those things. Like, I mean, even like your errors and emissions insurance with one of those like major brokerages.

Speaker 2: 20:31

Yeah.

Speaker: 20:32

You're paying twice what they pay for it.

Speaker 2: 20:35

Oh, they're making money. They make money on stock and reselling you your EO insurance

Speaker: 20:39

because Yep.

Speaker 2: 20:41

I mean that is kind of corporate-y way of doing things, although, yeah. And sometimes even if the. Yeah. Like even if it almost pencils out, like philosophically, I just don't wanna be a part of that kind of thing. No.

Speaker 4: 20:52

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:53

Like even if it would be to my benefit to maximize my systems and get all the trainings I can and stuff, I just don't wanna be a part of a company that I know is reselling me errors of emissions insurance to make margin on that part of me.

Speaker: 21:06

I mean, it's like I, I, I joked with one of the other guys that were, that used to work at Keller Williams. I was like, man, it's like, it's like Keller Williams is like, well, sorry, maybe not Keller Williams, but a lot of brokerages. Some brokerages yeah. Are like bottled water. Like you can get water anywhere. Right, right. You could even get it for free. Yeah. But yeah, they bottle the water and then they sell it to you for, for triple what? What?

Speaker 2: 21:30

Yeah, they're the Evian.

Speaker: 21:31

Yeah, they, yeah, they are. So, um, ion,

Speaker 2: 21:34

sorry. Um, so there's that and then you, you do lending too. They do, yep. And that's just to support those other functions, kind of make sure people are getting good service through there. Or to minimize. Unnecessary communications or

Speaker: 21:48

Yeah. Uh, a little bit of both of those. Um, you don't

Speaker 2: 21:52

require them all to work together, they're kind of all independent functions. No, no,

Speaker: 21:55

no. Absolutely not. Uh, people, a lot

Speaker 2: 21:56

of times people don't use you for their loan at all.

Speaker: 21:58

No.

Speaker 2: 21:59

cause they already had a mortgage lender to get'em a pre-approval and before they even met you.

Speaker: 22:03

That's right. Because they went through the first, they went, they, they looked up what the steps of the process are. They contacted a lender, they found out what they were qualified for, and then they called me.

Speaker 5: 22:11

Yeah.

Speaker: 22:11

And I'm not trying to step on anybody's toes Yeah. In that world. Um, but I was, when I was working in real estate, I noticed that a lot of times the, the lender wasn't very readily available for phone calls, wasn't great at communication. Um, and it really frustrated my clients, you know, like there would be some times where like we had, it was a week before closing and they didn't get an email or any kind of like, communication back from them for like two, three days sometimes. Yeah. That's rough. Yeah. And, uh,

Speaker 2: 22:48

well, and part of it's because of all the industry reform, it's hard to work for a mortgage issuing company that is responsive to its employees.

Speaker 4: 22:57

Sure. It isn't

Speaker 2: 22:58

even bad mortgage lender. Sometimes they just don't have anything that they could tell you yet because they've been waiting for two days to get an answer.

Speaker: 23:04

It's, yeah. It's the, it's the, from this department or that one, the, the underwriters a lot of times. Right. Um, and compliance departments and whatnot.

Speaker 2: 23:11

Yeah.

Speaker: 23:13

You get, you get them slowing the process up, but. I did find out that when I worked with mortgage brokers that that communication was a lot better.

Speaker 2: 23:23

Okay.

Speaker: 23:23

Um, whereas like with banks, it was like they would submit something and it would take two to three days.

Speaker 2: 23:28

Yeah.

Speaker: 23:28

It would take sometimes a week, you know, and like, this is supposed to close in five days. You're telling me seven days. Right.

Speaker 2: 23:35

Like,

Speaker: 23:35

you know this, you have the contract.

Speaker 4: 23:37

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: 23:38

I, I knew in my heart that I was really good at talking to myself. I'm great at communicating with me. Right, right. So as a realtor, I could talk to me the lender and have instant communication. You're like, yeah. Does this

Speaker 2: 23:51

guy have a chance of getting this lump? Yeah. Yeah. As it turns out, he does. So just gotta do this thing and that thing. Get the self-employed, uh, verification form and we're good to go. Yeah. Do you have support in that? I do.

Speaker: 24:01

I do. So with both the companies I've got, I have people that work with me. They work with a lot of other people. I have a transaction coordinator. Her name's Erica Rice, and she, hi Erica. Hi, Erica.

Speaker 2: 24:14

You'll probably listen to this.

Speaker: 24:15

I hope so. She's, uh, she's, she's awesome. And, and boy, she, she keeps it all together for me.

Speaker 2: 24:21

So like BVP Realty contracts with Erica or even employs her to do those? She's,

Speaker: 24:26

yeah. She's a transaction coordinator with a company called Signature. Okay. Um, and, uh, signature Services, uh, which is run by a woman named Savannah Campbell. Um, and they, uh, they do fantastic work. They were, they all were with Keller Williams originally. Okay. Ing and they've all transitioned away from them and started their own company also. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 2: 24:48

And does Signature do things like order title insurance and things like that too? I guess that's the mortgage part. No, no. They do. Yeah. They,

Speaker: 24:55

they, they do all the communications with the title company. Yeah. The title company orders that, but Sure. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:00

But ultimately, but they're helping to keep that whole cohesive. Yeah. Together.

Speaker: 25:05

They, I, I, I get it under contract and I hand the file off to them and they keep it all together. Oh, sweet. Yeah. Let me know when I need to Yeah, it's actually, it's, they're, they're great.

Speaker 2: 25:15

Yeah. And it's probably a per item thing with maybe a base or something like that for you, so you don't have this high overhead of having a transaction coordinator on the staff of BBP Realty. Yeah. And if you have a slow month where there's no transactions, you're like, oh

Speaker 4: 25:31

yeah,

Speaker 2: 25:32

I can't really afford this transaction coordinator when we didn't have any. You might have six the next month and then you can just push the gas pedal. You don't have to train somebody new, you know, or 10.

Speaker: 25:38

Yeah. Theoretically to have, to have in, in the real estate world to have per deal, um, employee employees is mm-hmm. Is definitely the way to go.'cause yeah, I mean, yeah, there could be, there screws off, there could be months when there's, you know, 10 deals closing and there could be months where one doesn't close. You are right. Nothing falls for two months. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:59

Yeah. That's fair. Interesting. Okay, well that brings it all together.

Speaker: 26:03

Lemme flip the script here. Shoot. You tell me about why'd you get into loco think Tank?

Speaker 2: 26:09

Um, well I wanted it for me. Um, I was a banker trying to become a restaurateur Right. At the time, what, what was the restaurant?

Speaker: 26:18

What was the concept? The concept? It was, it was, it was a food truck, right?

Speaker 2: 26:21

Well, the, not the, that wasn't why I left banking. Okay. I was trying to start a restaurant and it turned out it was harder and more capital intensive and location dependent than I gave it credit for. Yeah. And so I, that's when I ended up with the food truck. But the concept was, uh, everybody welcome International fusion menu with a locally sourced, uh, sourcing. Cool. So eat as much local food as you can. And then do you know what all the different kinds of people around the world have? You know, Asian foods and German foods and South American foods and American foods all on one menu, but just the best of using, because you've got so much variety potential. You could have a seasonal menu based on what's coming off the local Yeah. Crops at the time, but

Speaker: 27:07

no British food, right? No. No. Why would you not wanna sell

Speaker 2: 27:12

stuff? I'm though a big fan of beard meats food on YouTube. Sure. But, uh, even he, you can tell, would rather not have blood sausage.

Speaker: 27:22

I mean, you know, blood sausage is all right. Bangers and mash. It's okay.

Speaker 2: 27:25

Yeah, it's fine. Um, but it's fine, but it's not the pinnacle, you know, of food and creativity and things like that. Yeah. Um, so, okay. So that was the concept in general. Um, and the food truck attempted to be kind of a little bit like that. You know, we did a lot of locally sourcing of our pork and a lot of our, uh, veggie type products and stuff like that. Um, when we could, it was hard.

Speaker: 27:48

Okay. So how does, how did that, how does local think, tank figure in then transition into local think tank?

Speaker 2: 27:54

So, so I was a banker business banker for 15 years, and in my experience, a lot of my best customers had a pure advisory background. Um, in that case of Capital West Bank, several of the board members were together in a Vistage group. Vistage is kind of the 800 pound gorilla in my industry. And so the, the bank hosted Vistage chapter meetings when that member of the month didn't have a good meeting space at their location or whatever. So I was like, Hey, all of you, successful business leaders can meet in my conference room. You know, I just wanna do a five minute commercial in, in payment of that and we'll be good to go. So I learned about it. Eventually I became a member of what Vistage calls a trusted advisors group that would have like bankers and CPAs and lawyers and estate planners and financial advisors, realtors. Probably the

Speaker: 28:47

higher, the higher end of the kind of the professional

Speaker 2: 28:50

services. Sure. Yeah. And not even networking a little bit more on the trusted advisor side, but more focused on. Making better decisions faster and staying abreast of technology changes and hiring requirements and legal ramifications of the family act. Mm-hmm. Or whatever, like whatever it takes to become a really good CEO of a 50 person company. Yeah. Vistage is kind of a, a place for them to sit down and learn from each other how to do that. Okay. And bring in subject matter experts and things like that. So I wanted that for me as I tried to turn into a real business operator with a restaurant or a food trailer or whatever, but I didn't wanna pay the$1,200 a month that Vistage charged. Its a small business group. Right. Plus they wouldn't probably let me in'cause I didn't even have a business yet. Yeah. Um, but I had You probably also

Speaker: 29:42

have to be performing at a certain level to be a part of one. No, not really. They'll actually

Speaker 2: 29:46

take your money even if you don't really fit is my, in my experience. Okay. But they do because they charge$1,200 a month to keep the riff R out. Sure. Well now it's two grand a month. Um, yeah. So I wanted that for me, and then I could kind of round up some of my favorite customers from my banking days and add them to my chapter. Um, and charge. In that time I charged$150 a month instead of 1200. Mm-hmm. And I had a former Vistage, um, chair they call it, that had left Vistage and was out of her non-compete, and she agreed that she would be the facilitator as long as I could find all the smart kids to put in the chapter.

Speaker 4: 30:23

Okay.

Speaker 2: 30:24

So if I got four at 150, then I had 600 bucks. And Andrea required$500 a month payment to do the subcontract. Uh, and then she was a, was a, we knew each other through the small business development center. And so she would get 30 bucks per meeting when she sat down and met with my members. And so she would meet with six or eight of our members every month and bill another$200 a month to them. But what the SBDC noticed within like two or three years was, hey, all of these local think tank members are hiring more people and growing their businesses way faster than our average consultants clients. Like. Like it's working. It's working. Yeah. And so, so that kind of started kind of a mutual appreciation society of sorts where I continued to do consulting with SPDC for a long time, you know, where to find money, how to write your business plan. Sure. Things like that. And, and they would, you know, accommodate us. We, they moved to the inosphere and so we've still got chapters that meet at the Inosphere over there on Vine Drive. Okay. Uh, they've got a real nice couple of conference rooms, so our chapters meet kind of wherever they can kind of find a sweet space to meet that doesn't cost too much.

Speaker 4: 31:36

Sure.

Speaker 2: 31:37

Um, and have that kind of same impact of, you know, just a little bit of positive peer pressure.'cause like, you know, after nine years in, in real estate, maybe not at Keller, but probably, and even today, you can spend your days. Fucking enough and not doing anything productive for your business, or you can really invest and work hard and strive to, you know, serve your clients better than anybody else in your industry. And, and think of creative ways to ask them for referrals or to let them know you appreciate them. Yeah. Um, add mortgage lending to your suite of services so that doesn't become an impediment to closing transactions. Yeah. Same kind of thing. It's all about kind of continuous learning from people that think differently than you. And peer pressure to do the hard things that it takes to grow your business.

Speaker: 32:27

Do you guys have a book?

Speaker 2: 32:29

Local Think tank books? Yeah. No. No. You think I should? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah.

Speaker: 32:33

Seems like, it seems, seems like an obvious next step

Speaker 2: 32:36

now that AI exists. I could just have AI read all my, I've written a blog every month for the last seven or eight years or something. Oh, okay. Let's just take all those So I could just train an agent Yeah. There and be like, Hey, write me a book. You saw this. I want the title to be this. Yeah. Ish. And, uh, gimme a first copy by tomorrow afternoon. And, and like 20 minutes later they'd be like,

Speaker: 32:58

I got it. Are you ready, man? I've been making, uh, I've been making all my like. Um, advertisements and stuff with ai. Well, okay. I've been trying, I've been trying to make a bunch of stuff with AI posters, whatever. It always just comes out pretty awful. Yeah. Except for like the birthday cards and I made Thanksgiving cards. Okay. Uh oh. Yeah. I don't have my phone number. Is it clever? Yeah, it's pretty clever. Was, it was, uh, Nicholas Cage as a, in a baby's body. Okay. A funny face. That was I, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll send it to you. But that was my Thanksgiving card.

Speaker 2: 33:30

Did it say like, uh, it said

Speaker: 33:32

like, gobble, gobble happy Thanksgiving, and it was

Speaker 4: 33:35

so

Speaker: 33:35

awkward.

Speaker 2: 33:37

You're like, I'm just gonna use this. Like, no graphic designer would ever come up with this based on my criteria, but

Speaker: 33:44

my, my birthday card to people is like a unicorn, throwing up a rainbow with a, with a baby smile. Big chubby baby smiling, like, surfing

Speaker 2: 33:53

the vomit.

Speaker: 33:54

It's just, you know, it's like, it's just the weirdest, like, I'm trying to come up with the weirdest thing I can. Okay. I, I'm trying to stump ai.

Speaker 2: 34:01

Well, thank you for that by the way. I'm flattered by the notion, and I have both had thoughts of writing a book and had people say, you should probably write a book kind of stuff, you know? Yeah.

Speaker: 34:09

It doesn't sound like a bad idea. A guidebook to the, you know, to the think tank.

Speaker 2: 34:12

Now maybe that's the, maybe that's the, we've been talking about like a playbook for opening a new regions kind of thing, and maybe that's like, it could be some story, but more about, here, buy this book and read it. And you, Mr. Um, like. Business veteran with a, with a cool story in your past and that wants to continue contributing to the community that allowed you to be successful in business. You could start a local think tank chapter wherever you are.

Speaker: 34:42

Yeah. And, uh, uh, just read this book, an operator's manual. Yeah, yeah. You know, it, it might have a little bit of, uh,

Speaker 2: 34:49

with some stories. Yeah. Well, because we don't remember shit when there's no stories. You know, that's, that's why Jesus taught in parables is because otherwise, if he was just like, okay, let me, let's review again and I'll do some explaining about the 10 commandments. And then people would be like, what? I forgot what was number three again. But if you go, you know, thou shall not commit adultery. And here's a story about, you know, what happened to this guy when he looked a young lady up and down and he shouldn't have, because that's basically adultery with your eyes already, even if you didn't actually put your peepee in her. Hoo-ha.

Speaker: 35:23

Well, isn't that uh, no, that's, um, that's coveting the neighbor's wife.

Speaker 2: 35:27

Oh, so it's coveting too. Yeah. Yeah. But Jesus also says like, kind of, if you even look lustfully upon. Uh, someone that, that's actually kind of committing adultery in your heart?

Speaker: 35:38

Well, it's a good thing. I never have done that.

Speaker 2: 35:41

You've never done that? No. Never, never drive through CSU campus in the spring just to see how the views are that day. No, of course, course not ever.

Speaker: 35:48

Well, actually, I'm sure my wife is probably tired of watching this at this point, so right now we can start being honest. She's probably on social media again right now. How long have you been married? Uh, we have been married for two and a half years. We are going on our honeymoon finally on. Awesome. On Wednesday. Oh, congratulations. Yeah. Thanks for popping

Speaker 2: 36:08

into the local experience. Before you

Speaker: 36:10

leave, we're going to Costa Rica. Oh, fun. Nos beach in Costa Rica.

Speaker 2: 36:14

Is it Pacific Coast side?

Speaker: 36:15

It's Pacific. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:17

My wife and I, that was probably our favorite trip ever, was Costa Rica about 12, 14 years ago now.

Speaker 4: 36:22

Oh,

Speaker 2: 36:22

cool. And, uh, yeah, we stayed right on the Pacific Beach with Mal Paese and, uh, Santa Teresa. We're,

Speaker: 36:28

uh, yeah, we're where we are. A little bit south of there, I think.

Speaker 2: 36:30

Okay. Awesome. I think

Speaker: 36:33

I, you know, I've been looking at the map and to be honest with you, I, I now it all burs after a while, but

Speaker 2: 36:38

enjoy it. It'll be amazing if you can try to find a, a fishing trip early because you're a pescatarian kind of, right? You, yeah. Fishes with not much else. Meat.

Speaker: 36:47

Yeah. I fish and I, I ate birds.

Speaker 2: 36:50

We, we, uh, we caught a king mackerel as well as a bunch of black tuna. Oh, wow. On like a, on literally a$400. Half day fishing. Oh, cool. With some local dudes on like a boat that you'd be like, can't believe we're out here this deep in the ocean on this little boat. But we caught a bunch of fish and brought it home. And then, uh, uh, we went to a farmer's market literally the next day and bought all this like picked yesterday produce, and we ate like kings and queens for like, that sounds awesome. No money. Like

Speaker: 37:18

I want to, I want to do that. Yeah. So I recommend

Speaker 2: 37:20

and get, and do it with fishing right away so you have the fish to eat while you're there.

Speaker: 37:23

Yeah, no, that's a great idea. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, second day. Um, it is supposed to be, it's supposed to be, it's kind of rainy season. So we actually, we got like a deal because our friend owns a hotel there.

Speaker 2: 37:35

Oh.

Speaker: 37:36

Um, and because it's rainy season. Yeah. It's super low vacancy. Yeah. So we got a free place to stay for a week. Sweet. Um, yeah, it's kind of wild. I used Miles. We have a free place to stay. Like it's Oh yeah. So you can

Speaker 2: 37:50

drop a little, drop a dime on uh oh. You can definitely, yeah. On the fishing trip. Even if you don't get it for like$400, you could still have a good time. Well, it's two of you, so you might get it even less. I could probably join a group,

Speaker: 38:01

get a poll from somebody and find a dog. Well, you can do shore

Speaker 2: 38:03

fishing too. At least in Mexico it's legal to just do shore fishing. Is it in Costa Rica too? I don't know. No license required. Check it up. I've

Speaker: 38:09

looked it up. I haven't, I haven't actually like gone fishing. Fishing since I lived in Alaska. Really? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:15

Um, but there's always better fish out. Offshore.

Speaker: 38:18

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They totally are. But well, what I was gonna say is it's gonna be raining. Oh. And when it's rainy, that's actually a pretty decent time for shower. Oh, right.

Speaker 2: 38:27

Because there's like food coming off of the land into the water instead of just the other way around. So

Speaker: 38:32

yeah. It's actually not a bad time. Okay. If you go out there. Yeah. So maybe. All right. I don't know. We'll see. I'll buy it. I'll send you a picture of the fi, the first fish that I catch.

Speaker 2: 38:40

Alright. I look

Speaker: 38:41

forward to it. Yeah. Text or the biggest fish that I catch, text two. I don't know. One or the other? Both. Both. Hopefully. The first one's a big one. I'll just catch one and be like, cool. Let's call today. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2: 38:50

yeah. Check out the, uh, whether or not you can in Mexico, you could shore fish without a license. Anybody can.

Speaker: 38:55

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2: 38:56

Um, I'm not sure if that's also the truth in, in Costa Rica or what.

Speaker: 39:00

I, I think that the, I, I think in Mexico, the rules are a little bit more similar to America. I don't know. In Costa Rica you mean than Costa Rica? Oh, I don't know. I think it's a little bit more lax there. As from, from what I understand from talking, if you've got a

Speaker 2: 39:16

fishing pole, you can just throw it out there. Maybe. Yeah. Wouldn't, we'll find out. Wouldn't surprising. I mean, I

Speaker: 39:19

definitely don't want to go to Costa Rican jail for trying to fish off the dock. But we,

Speaker 2: 39:24

uh, we had a property right on the beach and there were somewhere in the vicinity of. 10 million hermit crabs on said property.

Speaker 4: 39:32

Oh

Speaker 2: 39:32

wow. Like we would come back from the beach in the evening time and it was literally freaky. You thought you were gonna step on'em. Yeah.'cause they were so thick, but then they would just kind of move outta your way. Yeah. Um, but literally the ground was virtually covered. It's wild, isn't it? For acres? Yeah, it was crazy. Um, so this conversation's been going for about like 45 minutes already. Can you even believe it?

Speaker 4: 39:53

Oh wow. Really?

Speaker 2: 39:53

Uh, but well, a little bit. We, we need to move on a little bit. Yeah. And why don't you talk to me about real estate, like what's happening in the Fort Collins real estate market,

Speaker 4: 40:02

um, in your

Speaker 2: 40:03

experience. Well, I've seen that the, like the top end of the market in a lot of parts of the country is softened a lot here. It seems to be so far steady just for lack of supply mostly,

Speaker: 40:15

you know, the, the higher end. So things, sales are definitely sitting on the market a lot longer. So days on

Speaker 2: 40:25

market is,

Speaker: 40:25

days on market is a lot higher. At least it has been. It's, it's sort of like, there seems to be a little bit of a push right now. It seems like people are a little bit more active. Okay. Um, the rates have gone down

Speaker 2: 40:36

slightly. Sure. Yeah. So it brought a few people back out to play

Speaker: 40:39

It did. Um, and, and I mean the rate thing like, you know, it's really just like, that's just something that happens in the news a lot of times. Like you, you know how it is. Sure. I mean, it really matters more of, uh. Of what people like think about what's going on in mm-hmm. In the market as opposed to what actually is going on. That's all of

Speaker 2: 40:59

economics really. Right? Yeah. Perception is reality.

Speaker: 41:01

Yeah. Yeah. And uh, right now people are like, oh, things are getting better or, you know, this and that. Okay. And so Trump's policies

Speaker 2: 41:09

are finally working. Just

Speaker: 41:11

kidding.

Speaker 4: 41:13

We'll get into that later. Yeah. Maybe after that joint. Um,

Speaker: 41:19

but uh, yeah, the, um, time on market, days on market is, is pretty long. Um, the, like, what are you

Speaker 2: 41:26

talking pretty long, like six months

Speaker: 41:28

for a lot of categories. There's quite a few. Okay. Um, I've had my, my lower end listings are sitting with no showings.

Speaker 2: 41:36

Really?

Speaker: 41:36

Yeah. Which that was. And when you

Speaker 2: 41:38

say lower end listings, is that like condos and town homes and stuff? Or are you talking entry level houses? Detached entry,

Speaker: 41:43

let's, let's call'em entry level houses. Okay. Yeah. Houses that are townhouses that aren't in the greatest of shape. Okay. You know, um, I wouldn't necessarily say they're like investment properties or should be investment properties. Yeah. But single family homes more first time home buyer kinda. Yeah. Um, they are sitting for a very long time. Hmm. My, you know, middle range houses, um, those are doing okay. But I mean, like when I, with my sellers, it's stressful with my buyers, man. We are crushing it.

Speaker 2: 42:15

Oh,'cause you're fighting gems.

Speaker: 42:17

Yeah, I just, I I'm gonna close, I'm closing on a deal, um, with a company on Friday. Um, and we are gonna close$280,000 under asking price. Oh

Speaker 2: 42:31

boy. On a single family?

Speaker: 42:34

No, it's on a, it's actually, it's a, a fire station.

Speaker 2: 42:38

Okay. Yeah. So a unique property.

Speaker: 42:40

Yeah. It's so unique. Property is commercial property. Yeah. Yep. And then I, I had an, I had another client close, but it still

Speaker 2: 42:46

takes the balls to say we're thinking this number.

Speaker: 42:49

Yeah. Yeah. That was a tough one. Uh, because I, I knew that a, uh, a fire chief was reviewing the offer. Right. I'm like, uh, I don't wanna be enemies with a fire chief's think. Yeah. Well, and the funny thing is, is that, you know, the, the business that, that I'm working with, they were very close to some fires many years ago, and this fire department happened to help them a lot. Uh, he's like, appreciate you, but still here's my offer. Yeah. But, well, I mean, it was, it, it wasn't so much that that was what it was worth. It was that that was what they could afford anyways. Yeah. For that. I mean, sometimes

Speaker 2: 43:27

that, and there's not any more buyers that want it. Right. Or at least I can afford it too.

Speaker: 43:32

I had a deal close, um, a single family. Home that I was working with the buyer close, and it closed for the same amounts as we the discount for the fire station. Oh. So right. We were like, we were joking. We're like, we're like, wow, we got got a house. House for free house. Yeah. Yeah. Off of the price of this. But yeah, so, so there's

Speaker 2: 43:53

some deals out there, there

Speaker: 43:54

are deals out there for buyers.

Speaker 2: 43:55

I've noticed that, that that property on East Mulberry used to, I forget it used to be a Midas or some, some kind of a, a auto shop, but there's got maybe a 10 Bay.

Speaker: 44:07

Oh yeah. And that thing's still vacant

Speaker 2: 44:09

for a while now and

Speaker: 44:11

they're trying to lease it.

Speaker 2: 44:12

Oh, is that why? Or sell

Speaker: 44:13

it for like a god awful amount. Oh, I gotcha. This company, it's been open

Speaker 2: 44:17

for a long time. So this is some, this, this company

Speaker: 44:18

that I'm talking about, we actually looked at that place that you talking about. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, in, in the commercial real estate world, like things are still happening and it's always been kind of a, a long game in that.

Speaker 3: 44:29

Yeah.

Speaker: 44:30

And, and just to kind of preference, I do work a lot in residential real estate, but I have been focusing a lot more on commercial real estate. You have? Have Okay. Yeah. I just like it better. There's a lot less emotions and Yeah.

Speaker 2: 44:40

Yeah. Um, it's a little more interesting. Properties are a little more unique. Yeah.

Speaker: 44:44

It's, it's fun. Yeah. Um, I dig it. It's, it's something that was different. Um, I still absolutely love getting my friends into their dream home.

Speaker 2: 44:52

Sure.

Speaker: 44:52

Or, you know, or, uh, an investment property that they're gonna be, you know, that that's their retirement. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I like to focus a lot on that. But, um, yeah, I guess, I guess to to, but doing a bunch

Speaker 2: 45:06

of open houses, showing houses to first time home buyers all day every day isn't really, I don't like that stuff.

Speaker: 45:13

I mean, I do, I do it. You'll do it. I do it. You'll do it. I do. I I do an open house every other weekend at least. Um, but it's not my favorite. I do a damn good job. Would I do it? Yeah. I don't like making reels about, Hey, look how awesome I am. I did my job in real estate. Yeah. The fluff of it is, is you don't have that much fluff in the commercial real estate industry. So I kind of like That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:38

Um, so, so market's stable. Interesting. Your career is evolving. Will you, do you do property management for the commercial properties then too?

Speaker: 45:48

We have a couple. Okay. Um, that's not really our bread and butter Sure. For our property management company, big bear properties, we predominantly, so we're, we're in all of northern Colorado. Um, the company originally started in the, um, college area. Okay. Of Greeley.

Speaker 2: 46:05

Oh, okay. Um,

Speaker: 46:07

we have transitioned into, we're pretty, we have a big, pretty big presence in the college area and around CSU. Yeah. And Fort Collins now. Um, but we also have residential houses just all over the place. Gotcha, gotcha. Everywhere from wind. But your bread and butter

Speaker 2: 46:20

started with, with college in Greeley started, yeah. Started, moved, kind to college in Fort Collins and now kind of expands into. Yeah. Landlords of all types.

Speaker: 46:29

Big bear is because of the NC Bears. Oh, UNC. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. We purchased the name with the, with the company. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so we, we didn't actually name it, but yeah, that's where it Interesting. Answers some questions. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 46:45

As a, as a bear. Yeah. I was gonna say it. Wondering, I was hoping you didn't,

Speaker: 46:49

we're biting on your style dynamics here, by

Speaker 2: 46:51

the way. I don't come, uh, you don't come in here. Uh, ungifted. I have. All right. Uh, for you, uh, uh, a, a note of thanks for coming onto the podcast. Uh, suitable for framing all, not really. Um, some loco experience, hot sauce. Oh, awesome. Lot of hot sauce. A pair of loco experience, shades and some stickers. Alright. Oh, and some and, and old school loco. Think tank cups. Cool. Uh, patio cups.

Speaker: 47:19

Well, all I brought were non-alcoholic drinks. Those, and, uh, and some stickers, but thank you. Uh, okay. So lemme see your hot sauce.

Speaker 2: 47:29

It's a tequila base. Um, but I'm pretty sure all the alcohol is,

Speaker: 47:33

but it doesn't have onions or garlic in it.

Speaker 2: 47:36

Is that right? Oh, yeah. You don't eat onions or garlic.

Speaker: 47:38

I'm allergic to onions and garlic, so I You're welcome, sir. Have this hot sauce. I, I will. Hey, if this is good enough and we're, you got proof, we can do some, I'm buying a case. Okay. That was made by

Speaker 2: 47:49

Zoe's kitchen, uh, down in Loveland, uh, Gabe from Cricket Cup. Oh, cool. Puts together hot sauces and things like that for folks at times. Right on. And so as well, I'm baking lots of colos and different things. So he made this for you? Yep. And then I just have leap and lizard labels make me some labels and Oh, cool. You know, we've got a little QR code on there if you want to check it out even more or whatever, and things like that. So I'm so a collaboration,

Speaker: 48:13

excited Now I want to go eat because I want to try your hot sauce. Like I don't, because I'm allergic to garlic. Hot sauce is like my favorite. It

Speaker 2: 48:19

always has onions or garlic in it probably, huh. Yeah. Always interesting.

Speaker: 48:22

Everything. There's only like two different kinds, like Louisiana Style Hot Sauce doesn't have it in it. Yep,

Speaker 2: 48:27

yep.

Speaker: 48:27

But every other kind does.

Speaker 2: 48:30

Your eyes must be better than mine if you were able to scan that label that fast. Yeah, my ears are, they're very well tuned, like looking for onions and garlic.

Speaker: 48:37

My, well, my ears are pretty shot, but my eyes work pretty well. Right.

Speaker 2: 48:41

So I feel, um, that we should talk, uh, kind of, well, I guess first before, like you mentioned kind of moving into commercial, is there other things, do you want to have a team of realtors at BBP Realty?

Speaker: 48:54

I do. Um, that's, that's gonna be my, my major driving force of next year.

Speaker 2: 48:58

Okay. And you'll continue to be residential and commercial or will most of those new, was it Jake or something? Uh, young man that's working. Joey, Joey. Joey. Joey, Joey, the new kid. Those Joey, the new kid. Another is to follow. Will kind of be mostly focused residential'cause that's kind of the broader market, easier to enter, learn from.

Speaker: 49:18

Yes. Yes. That, that is, yes. You nailed it. Um, and you can kind

Speaker 2: 49:22

of be a mentor and, and teach'em what not to do a little bit and stuff? Or is that part of the package or is that

Speaker: 49:28

would be part of the package? Yes. So what I would like to do is, uh, you know, have a few new realtors, new li newly licensed realtors. Yeah. Um, and that I, I would kind of prefer if it's mostly people that like I'm friends with who I know who like, yeah. We vibe really well. You're a longtime

Speaker 2: 49:45

friends kid or nephew or something that just graduated and wants to get into the business.

Speaker: 49:49

Yeah. Something, something to that tune. Um, but I also want to start bringing in a lot more seasoned veterans. Okay. Um, and then them be bringing in more people. Gotcha. Because the package that we offer at BBP Realty is, I mean, I undercut most of the brokerages. Right. It's a lot less expensive. We also have like bonuses for the agents who Bri who recruit, um, you know, each, they get a per deal. Sure. Yep. Yep. And whatnot. We have quite the structure, but we haven't really implemented it yet because this is the first full year of BBP Realty. Right. And in that year, I really wanted to make sure that I was, I was not overstepping Yeah. You know, not, not not going too far above and beyond because I'm also, I'm really. Busy in my own business now. Yeah. I would imagine. Yeah. You know, um, and I wanted to make sure that I had the time for that. Yeah. And I, I feel like next year that's, that's cool. That's my ambition. I dig it. That's what I want to do, you know? All right. So,

Speaker 2: 50:48

so fun. It's, uh, it's, it's neat to have that vision for taking the next step. Yeah. You know? Um, and will you continue to do, you'll just do mortgages for your clients or any BBP Realty clients would maybe be eligible? Do you do standalone mortgages for people that aren't buying or managing with you? Yeah,

Speaker: 51:06

I work with a lot of other agents. Okay. Yeah. So I, I work with a lot of, I, I have a few agents that I work

Speaker 2: 51:11

with, other kind of indies.

Speaker: 51:13

Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Um, you know, folks that they, they don't necessarily, they want somebody who will communicate really well. Yeah. And they love the fact that I always answer my phone. That, or at least, at least I call them back pretty quickly.

Speaker 2: 51:29

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: 51:29

Um, and, uh. You know, I'm not a part of a bank and so I don't have all the guidelines that the bank has. I don't have, you know, all, all the people taking in from all these things and, you know, maybe I make a little bit less than some other, like, per deal, I make a little bit less, but it makes other people happy.

Speaker 5: 51:49

Yeah.

Speaker: 51:49

Um, but I can, I can kind of trim that out and I like that about being, being sort of an independent Yeah. Yeah. I dig it. Um, but uh, yeah, I do do the mortgages for just about anybody that wants one. Yeah. So if you want mortgage, are you an a

Speaker 2: 52:05

DD kind of guy? Like it's easy for you to

Speaker: 52:08

do lots of different things at the same time. Super. A DDI, I would say that we've like judging just from this conversation, we both, oh yeah, we both world class SPR chaser. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 52:19

Although for my own sanity, I've tried to do a. Less many things, but maybe it would be better for me to do more many things. I don't know.

Speaker: 52:26

It wasn't so much that I was like trying to trace so many squirrels. It was that these opportunities sort of presented themselves. Yeah. And like what, what really happened was when there was the refinance boom a few years back.

Speaker 2: 52:38

Right. I was

Speaker: 52:38

sending out a bunch of refinances to one of my buddies, tens of thousands of dollars of my old college roommate Yeah. Of

Speaker 2: 52:44

mortgage, uh, fees and opportunities. Yeah.

Speaker: 52:46

He said, he said one day he said, you know, I really appreciate all the business. He said, but you threw away about 85 grand this year. And I said, that's a lot.

Speaker 2: 52:55

Right. That's like more than I made.

Speaker: 52:57

Yeah. He said, here's a link to mortgage, uh, licensing classes. Yeah. And you can hang your license with me, with our company. Nice. And, uh, the company, edge Home Finance that I work with now, um. They were very small. Yeah. It was him and two other guys. Oh, cool. Um, or three, maybe three other. Anyways, it was, it was a small company. Now it's the, uh, second largest mortgage brokerage company in the country. Wow. Yeah. And highest producing. Holy crap. Where and where is that based outta out of Minnesota.

Speaker 5: 53:27

Okay.

Speaker: 53:27

Yeah. Interesting. Randomly, I am happy. Be friends. I was born in Minnesota. Okay. Um, my ex college. Should we, should we go back there? Huh? Like, I

Speaker 2: 53:35

feel like we kind of beat the mortgage conversation that we always jump in the time machine. Sure. So let's just do it.

Speaker: 53:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2: 53:43

What town in Minnesota?

Speaker: 53:44

Uh, I was born in Burnsville, well, I guess it was Burnsville was born in, just

Speaker 2: 53:49

across the road, basically from Fargo. Right.

Speaker: 53:51

Uh, I don't actually know the geography of Burnsville. It's near Edina.

Speaker 2: 53:58

Oh, okay. No, no. That's done by Twin Cities then. Yeah, it's, I was gonna say, I think it's suburb. Okay. It's a suburb of Minneapolis. Suburb of Minneapolis. There's a, there's a bee named town on the Minnesota side somewhere close to Fargo. Okay. But it isn't Burnsville clearly. Okay. Wait,

Speaker: 54:11

is that where you're from?

Speaker 2: 54:12

Well, I went to college in Fargo. Oh, okay. I grew up in North Dakota. Right on jamestown. Hundred miles west of there. So, nice. So I've been all around Minnesota too. Sure. Exploring the world. Yeah. We, um, so you're Twin Cities suburb kid. Twin

Speaker: 54:25

city suburb. I was, well, I was only there until I was like six months old, and then we, so let's go to

Speaker 2: 54:29

where you grew up a little more.

Speaker 4: 54:31

We, well, it's, this is gonna be a long story.

Speaker: 54:34

So then we moved to Massachusetts. I was there until I was in the first grade. Okay. In the first grade. We moved to El Paso, Texas. Where the, that would be where like most of my like Yeah. Growing up did turning into John. Yeah. I was And what,

Speaker 2: 54:49

what, what takes you from Massachusetts to El Paso? That seems like an, is it military?

Speaker: 54:53

Uh, no, it's always the first question. Sales. Something. My dad was a corporate business.

Speaker 2: 54:59

Okay.

Speaker: 54:59

Guy sales

Speaker 2: 55:00

for Pace pic huh? Or something like what's in El El Paso?

Speaker: 55:04

Uh, well, it's actually, it's not what's in El Paso. It's what's in Juarez, Mexico across the Oh, okay. Way. He worked for a company called General Instrument. Okay. General Instrument had their, um, uh, a quila door, which is, um, Spanish for, uh, factory. Okay. And they built, uh, dashboards for cars and being. 20 minutes away from the Yeah, yeah. The border. It was a quality control and different fraction of the price to, to build over there. Yeah. Yeah. So he was the president of, of that Wow. For a while. Okay. And, uh, then we ended up my, well my, my parents split and my dad moved to New York. My mom stayed in El Paso. I moved to New York with my dad then. And when is

Speaker 2: 55:51

this circa,

Speaker: 55:52

this would be when I was a sophomore in, so I was, I was in El Paso until I was a, until I was a freshman in high school. Then my sophomore year was in Long Island, New York. My junior year was in Grand Blanc, Michigan. My senior year was in Greensboro, in North Carolina. Then when I was like 21, I moved back to El Paso for a couple years, then here, then to Alaska, then back here, uh, back to Alaska, back here. And then, uh, tell me

Speaker 2: 56:19

about El Paso.

Speaker: 56:21

El Paso.

Speaker 2: 56:21

Like you were, I guess probably a child of some privilege, uh, in that situation.'cause your dad was the president of a up and coming company or whatever.

Speaker: 56:29

Yeah, we lived in a nice neighborhood.

Speaker 2: 56:31

Right. Um, went to a good school.

Speaker: 56:34

W uh, I went to public school. Okay. Yeah, I went to public school. Wasn't that good of a school? No, it wasn't that good of a school at all. Um, it was, uh, the, I have a, I have a, a permanent mold allergy because our school was riddled with black mold. Oh, no shit. Uh, yeah. And, uh, I, you know, being a tall, lanky white kid, I got my ass kicked by the gangs in the school all the time. Um,

Speaker 2: 57:01

mostly all Hispanic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No blacks to speak of in the, no, it was population in El Paso. I know like Houston and Dallas are very high percentage black. Right. Not El Paso. Just El

Speaker: 57:10

Paso is, you're either white or you're, or you're Mexican, Latino, Mexican, and that's it. Okay. Um, there, well, I guess there are, there are quite a few native people, but Sure.

Speaker 2: 57:19

Um, well, a lot of mixes with the, the Mexican and the native populations or whatever, right.

Speaker: 57:25

Yeah. So, um, uh, but um, that really taught me a lot about, you know, being a multicultural person and appreciating all of that. Did

Speaker 2: 57:36

they whip some sense into you over time or?

Speaker: 57:39

They did, but you know, I mean, the thing was is, you know, on Sundays I would go over to my friend's. Uh, grandmother's houses. Yeah. And it was, you know, tamales and like, it was all the, the, yeah. Yeah. Mexican, um, weekend food and Sure. It was the greatest thing ever, you know, and like the family vibe of all that. Yeah. Really taught me a lot more because like, you know, with a lot of white people, like families are distant.

Speaker 2: 58:02

Yeah. And, and,

Speaker: 58:03

and you don't have a lot of that. I mean, maybe it's not just white, maybe just American people. Yeah. Um, well,

Speaker 2: 58:09

and, and it's less and less for us, you know, and, and, um, people are a

Speaker: 58:14

lot more white people are a lot more independent, I think.

Speaker 2: 58:16

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: 58:18

And I loved the family aspects of, of those cultures. And then when I, when I lived in North Carolina, um, I lived on my own, me and my roommate, we lived in the hood Okay. Because we were, we were broke. Yeah. And, uh, so yeah, we lived in the hood. This is after New York? This is after, yeah. So we went to New York, then Michigan. I was only there for a year. And then we went to, I went to North Carolina. But you moved out by then? And I graduated, I graduated high school in North Carolina. Okay. I, as a senior in, in North Carolina, moved out, got the cheapest apartment you could find. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Got the cheapest apartment we could find. We lived there. Um, and the funny thing was is, is me and my, my roommate, we. Well, we, we took acid one time and we were just one time. Yeah. We can, this one, this one time, this one time that we took acid, we, uh, we decided we wanted to investigate all of the different churches. Um,'cause it was like a Saturday night. Sure. And we were like, tomorrow, like, we're gonna go to a church. Right. I dig it and we're gonna go to a different one each weekend. And we, we, we did for quite a while and we Did you take acid

Speaker 2: 59:24

before each visit? No. Oh, okay. That was just where the idea came from. That was where the idea came from. Okay.

Speaker: 59:28

Oh my God. The, the, the first time that we did it, like we were still kind of like going and that was a mistake, but, but we kept doing it. We went to like a Jewish synagogue. We went to like, we went to quite a few churches, Southern

Speaker 2: 59:41

Baptist and you know, the Catholics, all that

Speaker: 59:43

we did, we went to all of those. Um, and it was a fantastic experience. But we went to a Black Gospel church and afterwards they invited us to a barbecue and, sorry, cookout. They invited us to a cook. You don't call it a barbecue. Okay. Yeah. Cookout. But they invite us to a cookout and they fed us and then they sent us home with Tupperwares. You know, like it was, there was so much food and we went home with just like, buckets of food. So Did you join the gospel church? We, we, we ba we kept going back,

Speaker 2: 1:00:14

I take it,

Speaker: 1:00:14

but then we realized that like everybody in our, in our apartment complex, like half the people, they went to that church too. Oh wow. And we, we, we went from being the, the white kids that got robbed a few times to being part of the community. Yeah. Cool. And it was awesome. Yeah. You know, it was, it was, it was great because then all of a sudden it was like, you realize like the community is a family vibe. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:00:36

Well, and to be invited into a community, whether it's a church or frankly a local think tank chapter. Yeah. Or a, a club, a rotary club or something. Even to work at my realty office for young Joey. Right. Sure. Um, it, it feels nice. It does. You know, Ava's sitting out here right now and she was talking about her and her friends are contemplating like, moving somewhere together. She's got four girlfriends that are like her besties, that are her roommates and they're like, should we just move to Denver and get a place and figure out how to get jobs there? Because we might just wanna stay together. You know? I don't wanna just move away somewhere and lose all of my friends. Yeah. As much as. Yeah.

Speaker: 1:01:19

I gave, so I, I've, I've done that quite a few times. Yeah. In my life. Um, not just when I was with my, my dad, but when I came back, when I went back to El Paso and then when I moved here and when I moved to Alaska, I, I just, I just did it to do it. Yeah. You know, and that's great thing. You should totally. If if she's listening, you should do it. She's, well, she should be make the move.

Speaker 2: 1:01:41

Yeah. I dig it. Um, tell me about Alaska, what was that like, fishing opportunities or something?

Speaker: 1:01:47

Yeah, I was a commercial fisherman in Alaska.

Speaker 2: 1:01:49

Okay. Um,

Speaker: 1:01:50

I,

Speaker 2: 1:01:50

salmon.

Speaker: 1:01:51

Uh, no I didn't. Crabs. I think we did crab. Okay. We did cod. Okay. Um, and then I also, I worked, we did halibut and Okay. We did tender. We, our boat was really big, so we tendered for salmon fishermen.

Speaker 2: 1:02:06

Oh. Like you hauled their, hauled their catch catch back for'em kind of thing. Whatever. Brought groceries. Gotcha. Water, fuel. Okay. Interesting. Water watering. Gotcha, gotcha.

Speaker: 1:02:14

Yeah. Um, the larger boats, like those like the bearing sea crabbers that you see on, on deadliest catch

Speaker 2: 1:02:20

Yeah.

Speaker: 1:02:20

In the summertime or when they're like on off season, they'll keep working and they do that kind of work.

Speaker 2: 1:02:26

Yeah. Yeah. They almost like a merchant marine vessel or something during those peak Yeah. Periods.

Speaker: 1:02:30

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Kind of a little bit. I mean, sort of, but yeah, it's, it, it's a similar idea. Yeah. Like you, you give'em orders, you give'em, you know, this and that. Good

Speaker 2: 1:02:37

systems for ordering this and that, whatever. Yeah.

Speaker: 1:02:39

I mean, they're, they would, they would keep us out at sea. Yeah. Which sucked sometimes, but like, sometimes, you know, it was good because like we have to, the, the, the fuel, the cost of fuel comes off the top right before we get paid.

Speaker 2: 1:02:54

Oh, really? Interesting. Yeah. Oh, so they, they run it just like a, like a little independent business. They know what their cost of fuel is and groceries too. There's the value of the fish that we can sell it for and all that. And here's what you guys ate. Yep. You freaking, and talk to me about that lifestyle a little bit. Like, I guess first, how did you get into it? Was it like, you know, back of a magazine ad come to Alaska for fishing? Or did somebody, you know, sign up for it or like. What was the circumstance in your life? You were in a, in a free agent chapter?

Speaker 4: 1:03:22

Yeah. Um, girlfriend

Speaker 2: 1:03:23

broke up with me, so I was like, screw it. I'm moving to Alaska and becoming a fisherman.

Speaker: 1:03:26

Yeah. You nailed it. So I was at a party, my buddy Lafe had, um, been telling me, I, I had, I had talked to, I talked to somebody who was telling me about when they were a crab fisherman in Alaska Okay. And how much money they'd made. And then I went to a party one night and my buddy was telling me he had just gotten back from Alaska and he did salmon fishing.

Speaker 2: 1:03:48

Okay.

Speaker: 1:03:48

And he had, you know, pot

Speaker 2: 1:03:50

full of money.

Speaker: 1:03:51

Yeah. You know, and we, we were drinking, we were drinking his booze that night. You know what I mean? Like, he's like, oh, I don't care. I mean, I came back with like$60,000, like, you know, he is hood rich and, uh, hood rich. Yeah. So we, uh, he told me about it and then I was like, all right, like, I like this idea. Like, I kind of wanna look into this. My girlfriend broke over with me and then I was like, I'm really looking into this. I was working at a music venue here in Fort Collins. It was called The Starlight. Oh, sure. I got fired. Um, okay. Because I booked hippie jam band music. Oh. And the new owner of the place didn't like the music that I booked, and he was a junkie. Okay. And he fired me. Interesting. And I just so happened to have made enough money. To buy a ticket and have some, some extra cash when I got there. And

Speaker 2: 1:04:42

that's fun.

Speaker: 1:04:42

I was like, all right, I'm gonna go to Alaska and I'm gonna try this out.

Speaker 2: 1:04:45

Yeah.

Speaker: 1:04:46

So I, I went up there and then I almost, I, I was trying to find a job and I couldn't find a job fishing, and I was gonna go to the oil fields. Oh, wow. But then I found a job at a cannery and Andry in Kodiak, Alaska. Um, and boy, that job sucks.

Speaker 2: 1:05:03

It wasn't worth the trip.

Speaker: 1:05:04

You're just weighing fish and you're just handing it off. And like, I worked from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM Uta seven days a week.

Speaker 2: 1:05:12

Yeah. Just totally manual lugging fish. Yeah.

Speaker: 1:05:14

I rented a room from a, a, it's a guy, a Filipino family.

Speaker 2: 1:05:18

Okay.

Speaker: 1:05:19

They're so awesome. They, they kept me together there for a little bit. Yeah. They fed me and, you know, like made sure that, that I was, I was safe. Um, but, uh, I would work until 6:00 AM every morning and then I would go walk the docks and I would ask all the different captains of the fisher, the fisher boats. Yeah. You need a

Speaker 2: 1:05:38

fisher coming guy.

Speaker: 1:05:39

Hey, do you need a crew member? Yeah. And then one guy would be like, yeah, like over in the other bay over there, they need one. And there was nobody over there. Like, they would mess with me. Oh man. And then finally one dude says his name was a Lois Cope, and he was my, my, my skipper. He, uh, he said a Alois Copen. Alois Copen. Okay. So, yeah. Russian. Russian guy. Okay. Um, he said, be back here at 4:00 AM tomorrow morning. I said, just like that, huh? And he said, yeah, be here. So I went back to the house called in Sick at

Speaker 2: 1:06:12

the Cannery.

Speaker: 1:06:13

Oh, I, yeah, I, I called him and said, Hey, I got a job on a boat. And they said, yep, okay. It's cool.

Speaker 2: 1:06:19

They're used to that.

Speaker: 1:06:19

Yeah. They, they're super used to it. They said, they said, hit us, you know, like if you want a job when you come back, like you did good.

Speaker 2: 1:06:25

Yep.

Speaker: 1:06:25

Yeah. Like, you know, when the season's over, you can come back. Yeah. And, um, so, uh, uh, most of the guys that I knew were going out for like three days at a time, and they were do, they were doing what's called jigging for cod.

Speaker 2: 1:06:39

Okay.

Speaker: 1:06:40

It's where you put down a bunch of hooks and you just like that, and then you pull'em up. Yep. It's a small boat. And I thought that's what I was going to go do. But I got onto a pot fishing boat, and, uh, it's like the, like what you

Speaker 2: 1:06:53

see on the, oh, POTS for crabs and stuff. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker: 1:06:55

yeah. Uh, they were going out for COD because he, he, the Lois had said, yeah, we're going out for cod, you know, seasoned cod. And we had been traveling for about a day. And, uh, I said, Hey, so, uh, what, like when are we, when are we going back to, to Kodiak?

Speaker 2: 1:07:12

Yeah.

Speaker: 1:07:12

And he said, well, you know, we'll probably be back there around May. And, uh, it was February.

Speaker 2: 1:07:20

This is like, did you have days before that? You worked there for a little while and then this happened, or you just like

Speaker: 1:07:25

No, no, no, no. I packed my bag. I, okay. I got my stuff. I, I moved it onto the boat. Okay. And thought I was gonna be gone for three days. Wow. Um, and I was gone for three months. You didn't leave anything

Speaker 2: 1:07:36

with the Filipino family or anything? I did. I left a, I left quite a bit of stuff. I imagine. Yeah.

Speaker: 1:07:40

They were so, my God, they thought I was dead. Right. Yeah. They thought I died'cause they thought I was only gonna be gone for three days.

Speaker 2: 1:07:46

Days. Well, and you'd plucked up the room too, probably. Well, they probably couldn't. Really? Yeah.

Speaker: 1:07:50

And the funny thing was, is I tried to call them a few times'cause like you couldn't really, there weren't really phones

Speaker 2: 1:07:55

Right.

Speaker: 1:07:55

Anywhere. I mean, this is like 2005. So cell phones weren't really super popular yet. Yeah. Area's not out there. Yeah. Yeah. And, and definitely not there. Right. They had a satellite phone on the boat, but it costs like$10 a minute. Right. Or something like that. And, uh, there's a

Speaker 2: 1:08:10

language barrier you couldn't become

Speaker: 1:08:12

Right. Well they, there were phones at the canneries, so like when we would go to shore, I could use the phone, but like, you gotta wait in line with like 20 people, all the other camera workers and you get on the phone. And I would, I would call my mom, I would call my brother. I would call like a couple of my friends, you know, and like, I mean, those, each of those phone calls was like five bucks. Sure. You know,'cause it was,'cause it was back then and it cost money. And so

Speaker 2: 1:08:38

you're like, did they tie'em on buoys or something? These pots kind of, and then just run the circuit, kind of. Is that how they work it then?

Speaker: 1:08:44

Yes. So yeah, you have, you have a long line attached to the buoy or to attached to the pot. You launch the pot over the side of the boat, then there's like the line, what rope, um, that goes down and then there's a floating buoy on top. Mm-hmm. And you, you do a big string of those. Um, and then when it ends. Clean up the boat and you go back and you do it again, or you go depending on how, like what, what it's catching. And so these

Speaker 2: 1:09:12

guys could stay out there because they, or they did stay out there because they were catching and then they'd have other boats come and resupply'em and send their

Speaker: 1:09:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:09:19

Catch back and whatever.

Speaker: 1:09:20

When you're in the fish, you stay where you're at. Yeah. Yeah. You keep going, you keep going as long as you can with cod you can, but with crab you have to keep the crab alive. So you had to, you had to, you had to offshore them. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, they could, they didn't have tenders for crab. Oh, I

Speaker 2: 1:09:32

see.

Speaker: 1:09:33

At least not then. I don't, they might know. But you

Speaker 2: 1:09:34

weren't going back to Kodiak, you were going to every, wherever else we were going to drop off your crab.

Speaker: 1:09:38

Yeah. A little village called Chi Alaska. Oh, okay. It was, uh, a village of, I think it was 75 people in the Interesting. The winter. Yeah. And uh, um, like 275 in the summer when the cannery there Yeah, yeah. Was, was going interesting for salmon season. Interesting. But yeah, that was actually, so

Speaker 2: 1:09:56

then you came back to El Paso, then I went back to Alaska again.

Speaker: 1:10:00

No, I went back to, I came back to, came back to Fort Collins. Came back. Okay. Um, how did

Speaker 2: 1:10:03

you find Fort Collins? Where did that chapter start? My brother,

Speaker: 1:10:05

he went to CSU. Okay. Yeah. Um, and, uh, I was living in El Paso and

Speaker 2: 1:10:11

my girlfriend broke up with me. My girlfriend broke

Speaker: 1:10:13

up

Speaker 2: 1:10:13

with me.

Speaker: 1:10:17

Well, actually I broke up with my girlfriend. Oh, good. But, um, it matters, but Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But then I, uh, uh, yeah, I decided you're like, bro, you got an extra room. Right. Well, the thing was, I was supposed to move to Chicago and I, uh, I. Kind of at the last minute had this hunch that that wasn't the right move for me. Yeah. And my brother was like, dude, you gotta move to Colorado. It's amazing.

Speaker 5: 1:10:40

Alright.

Speaker: 1:10:40

And I said, I'd been here, you know, I'd spent three days here. I was like, yeah, I know, I know Colorado. It's awesome. So I moved to Colorado. Cool.

Speaker 2: 1:10:48

And what year was that? First time?

Speaker: 1:10:50

Uh, I moved here on 3, 3 3. That was the day that I moved here. I dig it. Yeah,

Speaker 2: 1:10:54

I dig it. Yeah. And then back here permanently when? On six, six. Six. Of course.

Speaker 4: 1:11:01

I know. It's kinda wild. But,

Speaker 2: 1:11:02

and, and how did the Hodis chapter get going? So you were, you were in the music scene already, it sounds like. Yeah. Booking music for Starlight. Oh, by the way, I meant to mention if anybody out there wants them. Um, at the auction I purchased both of the brass beer towers from the Starlight for my new restaurant that I was gonna be opening really 12 years ago or something. And so I have two. Old brass beer towers from the Starlight in my garage. No way. Yeah. You want, you wanna buy'em? I'll make a good deal.

Speaker 4: 1:11:30

Okay. I want to

Speaker 2: 1:11:31

check it out. That's cool. Okay. They're like five or six taps, uh, but a nice brass bridge. Yeah. Is

Speaker: 1:11:35

it, is it from, is it from Hodis or is it No, from Starlight. It's from the actual, from the Starlight back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. Oh wow. They had like

Speaker 2: 1:11:42

an auction of all their crap and That's crazy. It was in that time when I was working on my restaurant and I thought, oh, I'll just get the Starlights old handles. That'll be cool. How funny.

Speaker: 1:11:50

Uh, so I think

Speaker 2: 1:11:50

I got'em for a hundred bucks or, you know, something. Not too much.

Speaker: 1:11:53

Yeah. Um, actually, let me talk to my whole business partner.

Speaker 2: 1:11:57

I got, I got two. I'm,

Speaker: 1:11:58

I'm gonna see'em tomorrow. I dig it. But yeah, I'll bet you we probably him or, uh, or, or SC Leary, he was like the original owner of Starlight. Don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll, I'll hit him up. I haven't, I used to go there pretty

Speaker 2: 1:12:11

regularly. I, I liked your, uh, bookings and including when you did the jam bands. That's awesome.

Speaker: 1:12:17

Well, yeah. So I, I came back and, uh, I started working at a bar called The Vault Oh sure. And, uh, started getting back into booking music and I was doing construction on the weekdays. Okay. I was a framer. Alright. And then I broke two of my ribs in my back and, uh, in a

Speaker 2: 1:12:34

non OSHA certified way,

Speaker: 1:12:35

in a very non OSHA certified way. And, uh, that was, that was the end of my, uh, my construction career.

Speaker 2: 1:12:43

Did that, are you, are you hurt from it? Still? Uh,

Speaker: 1:12:46

no, no, no. I mean, you don't have any lasting No. Now I've got all

Speaker 2: 1:12:49

brand new wiped out your Olympic opportunities.

Speaker: 1:12:52

It did, it really screwed up my Olympic diving career. Yeah. But man, I, I used to dive the hell out of a pool. Um, but, uh, um, I got back into booking, um, Hodi Starlight became the hotties.

Speaker 2: 1:13:06

Oh. I guess I didn't even really realize that there was a transition there. Yeah. I thought Starlight just kind of disappeared.

Speaker: 1:13:11

Yeah, it, um, it did disappear, but then it became, then another partnership bought it. Gotcha. Team ho's.

Speaker 2: 1:13:17

Okay.

Speaker: 1:13:18

That partnership didn't really know much about running a music venue.

Speaker 2: 1:13:21

Gotcha.

Speaker: 1:13:21

So they started to crumble. I was booking shows there. I was the only one that was booking shows that were selling out. Um, they said, Hey, we have this opportunity if you want to buy in. I bought in pretty cheap because it was going under. Right. And I bought the bar that I got fired from.

Speaker 2: 1:13:40

Helped turn it around. Yeah.

Speaker: 1:13:41

So, uh, yeah, then I own that with, uh, a couple partners for a number of years. Sold outta that, went back to school. And, and you mentioned

Speaker 2: 1:13:51

like, uh, like your partner chased you out of that lifestyle wise or something with a hodis season. Was it for your health? Your No, no, no, no.

Speaker: 1:14:00

He, my partner who bought me out. Yeah. Um, he, uh, he gave me the opportunity to live a healthier life, is what I meant. Fair for that. Fair. Fair. Yeah. Yeah. It was,

Speaker 2: 1:14:10

I, that, that's what I meant. It was kind like for your own good. Yeah. In some ways you were. You know, partaking of the, I was house sauce too much and

Speaker: 1:14:19

staying up a little late. Yeah. A lot. It's a hard lifestyle. It is a tough lifestyle. And I wasn't, uh, I wasn't very good at saying now back then. So

Speaker 2: 1:14:27

Fair. I dig it. Yeah. So, back to school for what?

Speaker: 1:14:31

Uh, well, actually I wanted to go to school for wind energy technology. Oh. And then I realized I didn't wanna do that Right. Pretty quick. I worked at Vestas for a little while. Oh, okay. Yep. And, uh, wanted to be in that field and then realized that there's just no such thing as green energy.

Speaker 2: 1:14:46

Right. Without dramatic subsidies. This whole industry is fake,

Speaker 4: 1:14:49

kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 2: 1:14:52

solar is a little bit that way too in the moment. Yeah. You know, uh, it's working, it's getting closer.

Speaker 4: 1:14:57

Yeah. And as

Speaker 2: 1:14:57

Elon says, you know, in the long run, all of the energy is from the sun. Sure. But it just might take us a little longer to get there than we think.

Speaker: 1:15:05

Yeah. Um, I, you know, that was, it was the amount of like poisons and toxins. Right. And fiberglass and like all the other stuff that goes into making wind turbines was like,

Speaker 2: 1:15:16

well, at least that could be recycled really easily.

Speaker: 1:15:18

Uh,

Speaker 4: 1:15:19

yeah.

Speaker: 1:15:19

Just kidding. Yeah. Right.

Speaker 2: 1:15:22

I wish So you got disenchanted with that pretty quickly too? I did,

Speaker: 1:15:24

yeah. And then I said, you know what, like I am, uh, I've, I've been in semi in sales. Yeah. You know, the music industry that's, I know a lot

Speaker 2: 1:15:33

of people sales. Finally, some of'em are starting to get qualified to buy a home. Yeah.

Speaker: 1:15:37

Well, yeah. Started with cars. Oh, right. And then, um, but yeah, so that was sort of the, the very strange transition Yeah. Yeah. Into that world. And I don't know. So at

Speaker 2: 1:15:47

hos you, uh, were kind of the, the, your main skill was kind of the talent booking in a sense of what people would like. Is that kind of the heart of that

Speaker: 1:15:55

no business or, my main skill was drinking. Um, no, my main skill there was getting people in the door. Yeah. Yeah. I

Speaker 2: 1:16:06

I not just booking good shows, but also marketing it. Yeah. Helping spread the word, whatever that was. Like, it was being friends

Speaker: 1:16:12

with everybody. It was talking to people. Oh. And well,

Speaker 2: 1:16:14

and being a main skill of drinking. If you're, if you're a regular at nine different places that also feature music occasionally, and you talk about the upcoming shows and stuff like that, a lot, that's a pretty good promotion. It's, it's, yeah. It's, it requires a large amount of alcohol consumption. Yeah, it

Speaker: 1:16:28

does. Sure. But you were gonna do that anyway in those days, so probably would've, I would've done it somewhere. Right. Um, but yeah, so that was interesting. That was my skill was mostly getting people in the door. Okay. Um, and, uh, turned the failing club into a thriving club for a lot of years. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then, you know, it just kind of, I really realized that that's not who I, I didn't want to, I didn't want to die in that place.

Speaker 2: 1:16:55

Yeah. Well, and as we get, I don't know how you're younger than me, but 46. 46, not that much younger than me. You know, once you get tip over that, you know, 40 number even, or a 35 number even the recovery time is different. Yeah. And the interest in staying up until three o'clock in the morning is lower.

Speaker: 1:17:15

Yeah. Uh, yeah. Now, like I used to, like, I, I drink and man, I just wanted to stay up and see the sunrise.

Speaker 5: 1:17:22

Yeah.

Speaker: 1:17:23

Now, like, I mean, I've got a few drinks in me and I want to be at home in bed. Right. Like, I am ready to go like, pretty early.

Speaker 2: 1:17:30

Yeah. Put me home.

Speaker: 1:17:31

Um, but yeah, the recovery man, I, I, I drank on the night before Thanksgiving, and I hadn't drank in like, probably like two months or so. Yeah. Holy crap. Oh, I, and I, and I, I did, I went out. Thanksgiving was a

Speaker 2: 1:17:44

longer day than it even would've been otherwise.

Speaker: 1:17:46

Yeah. Yeah. Luckily, well, we didn't, we didn't do much. My wife and I, we just stayed home and,

Speaker 2: 1:17:51

yeah. No Turkey. Nope. Zero Turkey. What'd you do for food on Thanksgiving then?

Speaker: 1:17:56

Uh, we ordered IHOP through DoorDash and, uh, IHOP is an

Speaker 2: 1:18:01

interesting decision.

Speaker: 1:18:02

It was, it was great. I had, uh, it was a breakfast for dinner. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:18:06

I like it.

Speaker: 1:18:06

I, we, we got that for breakfast and then we got, um, Asian food for dump. I think we got dumplings. Yeah. For. I dig it. It was delicious. It was great. While we're here,

Speaker 2: 1:18:17

why don't we talk about your wife a little bit? Sure. Um, where did you find her?

Speaker: 1:18:22

Where did I find

Speaker 2: 1:18:22

her? Yeah. And where did she find you?

Speaker: 1:18:24

Um, well, uh, one of my friends had tickets to go see a Red Rocks concert. It was a band called Trample by Turtles. Oh,

Speaker 2: 1:18:33

great band.

Speaker: 1:18:33

Yeah. And, um, they, uh, he needed a ride'cause he didn't have a car. Okay. And, uh, which is, that's a whole different story about him. But, um, and, uh, this, uh, so my wife is a yoga teacher.

Speaker 5: 1:18:51

Okay.

Speaker: 1:18:51

She's a yoga teacher at the gym that I go to, Raintree Athletic Club.

Speaker 5: 1:18:55

Okay.

Speaker: 1:18:55

She, um, I had seen her across the gym for a couple years prior to that.

Speaker 5: 1:19:00

Okay.

Speaker: 1:19:01

And my buddy didn't tell me that. Anybody was coming with us, but he had invited her.

Speaker 2: 1:19:07

Oh.

Speaker: 1:19:07

And I see the cute yoga teacher that I've had a crush on for two years, walking up to my car and I was like, oh, well I've got a two seater Tacoma. Oh. So she rode in the front seat. He rode in the, you know, the, the, the, the bed? No. Like it's got like those crappy little seats that are seats. Yeah. Like the sideways sitting

Speaker 2: 1:19:27

for nine year olds kind of thing. Yeah.

Speaker: 1:19:29

So he rode in the back, she rode in the front. We it off You rode the down Red Rocks. Yeah. Our, uh, our first picture was taken by, uh, Dave, one of the guys from Trampled by Turtles backstage at Red Rocks. That's awesome. Yeah. He took our, our first picture that we have together. I love it.

Speaker 2: 1:19:44

I love it.

Speaker: 1:19:45

He took our picture again then the following year, a year later, same place, but dig it.

Speaker 2: 1:19:49

Yeah,

Speaker: 1:19:50

yeah, yeah. So that's how we met. And then, then I was She didn't break

Speaker 2: 1:19:54

up with you, you didn't break up with her and somebody said, let's get married, I guess.

Speaker: 1:19:58

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, on Christmas, Christmas day. Um, about three years ago.

Speaker 2: 1:20:05

Okay. Well, happy upcoming anniversary. Thank you. And you guys have any littles

Speaker: 1:20:08

running around? We've got a dog named, maybe

Speaker 2: 1:20:11

a dog named maybe.

Speaker: 1:20:12

Yep. She's, she's about three right now. Very cool. Um, she's pretty awesome. An

Speaker 2: 1:20:16

early, early love child of the pair of you. Yeah.

Speaker: 1:20:21

Yeah, she's, uh, were

Speaker 2: 1:20:22

you married first and then the dog came? Or were you just engaged? No,

Speaker: 1:20:25

we were, we were, we were, uh, geez. Were we engaged when we got married? It must have been.

Speaker 2: 1:20:30

cause you're gonna be married three years. Shortly.

Speaker: 1:20:32

Yeah. I think we, I think we got engaged right after we got her. Okay. No, I think,

Speaker 2: 1:20:38

yeah. Yeah. Which do you think is the bigger commitment? Getting a dog with somebody or buying a ring?

Speaker: 1:20:43

Um, the dog. Yeah. I,

Speaker 2: 1:20:47

you don't wanna have to split the dog in half at some point, right?

Speaker: 1:20:49

Yeah, no, the dog has you pretty much.

Speaker 2: 1:20:52

If by getting a dog with a girl, you're basically saying, I'm willing to marry you. Whatever.

Speaker: 1:20:56

Right. Like Sarah, my wife. It's the pre-engagement though. She doesn't very often she can buy her own food. Hm. Maybe cannot.

Speaker 2: 1:21:07

Right. So Sarah would be more fine without you than maybe would, she

Speaker: 1:21:10

would probably survive a little bit longer. Well, without, maybe not have to

Speaker 2: 1:21:14

test that theory. Yeah. I'm gonna call for a break. Yeah. We're gonna have a little bit more fun and then we're gonna get you outta here so you can go, uh, finish up on all that. Uh, real estate stuffs pretty go to Costa Rica. Sounds great. You think about this bourbon, I don't think, you know the, what I poured.

Speaker: 1:22:16

It's great. It's, it's um, um, the guy that owns the place, lives like around the corner. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:22:22

My mountain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been comparing it to other, can't think

Speaker: 1:22:25

of what his name is right now. Like 50,

Speaker 2: 1:22:27

$60. Bottled bourbons and mob usually is. A little better for me than most of them.

Speaker: 1:22:32

I mean, I'm not a super huge bourbon kind of, so it's 39.99

Speaker 2: 1:22:36

almost everywhere.

Speaker: 1:22:37

I am a, I'm a huge scotch kind of soer. Okay. And I like, I like scotch and tequila and mezcal. Those are, those are my drinks. Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:22:43

Um, I'm that plus bourbon, I guess that makes Yeah.

Speaker: 1:22:45

But this one, like, honestly, it tastes fantastic. Like, I, I really, it's not, it's not too sweet. Which I don't like, I don't like bourbons when they're too sweet and it's not too like just alcoholy. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's really good. Ready to go mob.

Speaker 2: 1:23:01

Yep. Cheers. You should sponsor the local experience, at least with free liquor, because that's like your fourth commercial already if you're a listener next. Yeah. So I'm gonna have you next time. Uh,

Speaker: 1:23:12

next time. My, uh, my dog fights with his dogs at the fence. I'll tell him. Yeah. I'll

Speaker 2: 1:23:16

give you an extra sticker. There you go. This guy's looking for a sponsor. So grab three of these. They're each attached to a question. Okay. And, uh, I got

Speaker: 1:23:24

one.

Speaker 2: 1:23:26

Oh, that one's gonna roll on the floor.

Speaker: 1:23:27

It's all good. They're ping pong balls. They'll probably survive.

Speaker 2: 1:23:30

It's true. Can you read the numbers from the floor?.

Speaker: 1:23:37

Okay. I've got 29.

Speaker 2: 1:23:41

Okay.

Speaker: 1:23:42

18 and 23,

Speaker 2: 1:23:44

29, 18, 23. Okay. That was the last one, right? 23? No, 23 was the last one. Yes. Okay. I like this one to start.

Speaker: 1:23:56

Well, I, it could be 81. I don't know. No, we don't have that many.

Speaker 2: 1:24:01

Um, 23. I'm gonna start with just'cause I, I think that's a good entree into this segment. Or do you have any stupid human tricks, uh, that you would like to share with our listening and watching audience?

Speaker: 1:24:12

Um, let's see. What do I, uh, I can't think of anything that I've, I've got that's like appropriate.

Speaker 2: 1:24:25

I can, uh, I don't, can't do it now with my sweatshirt on and stuff, but I can do this and put this over my head.

Speaker: 1:24:31

Okay. That's a cool one. Yeah. That's my only one as far as I know. See, I mean, I can, I can, I can tear off the tip of my, oh. Ah, that was kind of

Speaker 2: 1:24:41

cool. Yeah. You got it on the camera.

Speaker: 1:24:42

Um, here wait, hold on. Do this. All right. Look at me in the eyes. Can you

Speaker 2: 1:24:46

wiggle your eyes? Ooh, that's pretty cool. Yeah, that's, that's unusual.

Speaker: 1:24:53

Did you zoom in on this? Yeah, that's, uh, I

Speaker 2: 1:24:57

could cross my eyes and I can, but I, yeah, I can't like, make him move independently like that. That's weird. My brother can wiggle his eyeballs. Like both of'em

Speaker: 1:25:09

like that.

Speaker 2: 1:25:10

That's your eyelids. Oh, there, I'm wiggling my eyeballs too. It's just, you can't see it. Maybe. I believe you. Um, we're gonna move on to, uh, let's do number 29. Okay. What's been the most surprising thing to you about running this business or this collection of businesses?

Speaker: 1:25:33

Um, the most surprising thing to me about running business is,

Speaker 2: 1:25:41

or even hodes for that matter, is that there's like, what, what non-business people wouldn't know.

Speaker: 1:25:48

Perhaps there's a certain point when you have to do it because you just love it and it's not just for the money.

Speaker 5: 1:25:57

Hmm.

Speaker: 1:25:58

And when you realize that doing things for other people, even if it does make you money, is far more rewarding Yeah. Than a paycheck.

Speaker 2: 1:26:09

My first sales training class was, uh, selling is helping.

Speaker: 1:26:12

Yes. Yes. And that's been my mentality is I, is I help people. Yeah. And it. It was something that, like, I, I read this book called the The Go-Giver.

Speaker 5: 1:26:23

Yeah,

Speaker: 1:26:23

yeah. Um, and that was kind of the premise of that book. And then I thought, you know, like, eh, that's kind of hokey, whatever. Right? And then I decided, all right, well why don't you actually make that how you, how you think and how you feel. And man felt way better. I like it. Um, little bit less like, I mean, even if it was a little bit, yeah, it was, it was, it was less selfish. You know, when you're helping people and you're doing something for other people, it is more rewarding than just getting paid.

Speaker 2: 1:26:49

Well, it's an unusual, like I was just reflecting on like your prior career, you know, booking music and booking shows and stuff. And I've been a long time local and beyond music fan. And I, and I see the value in it for sure. But a lot of times what you're selling is a long night out and a hangover tomorrow.

Speaker 4: 1:27:09

Yeah. You know,

Speaker 2: 1:27:10

as compared to a house or an investment property or something where you can definitely say selling is helping. You know, there's times when somebody sold me, I'm going to a, a show, and they didn't help me at all. Really? Yeah. Like, I might've had a good time at the time, but it don't,

Speaker: 1:27:25

it doesn't actually benefit your life. Like, it's not the same

Speaker 2: 1:27:27

as a liquor store or a, like, self storage is one of those businesses where the whole industry is a little bit yucky.'cause anybody that's renting a self storage space, most of them should just.

Speaker: 1:27:39

Get rid of their shit. Get rid of their shit.

Speaker 2: 1:27:41

Yeah. You charge'em like half of what their shit is worth every year to rent this self storage space.

Speaker: 1:27:46

Yeah. I, I tried to pitch one of my commercial clients. I tried to pitch a storage, a storage unit. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And he was like, he's like, yeah, you know, like, I mean, what happens when people, like, people are minimizing nowadays, he's like, whatever happens, he's like, no, this industry's gonna go nowhere. And I was like, well, all right. I don't, I don't really think that's the case. No,

Speaker 2: 1:28:05

but, but it's still kind of yucky. But it's funny

Speaker: 1:28:07

to think

Speaker 2: 1:28:07

about it that way. Yeah. Right. Or like my longtime friend, uh, that was in the alcohol business, you know, a liquor store, like your regulars might, depending on the store, might be like 30% of your revenue in some cases.

Speaker: 1:28:22

Right. And you're just promoting a alcoholism at that point. And those, and then

Speaker 2: 1:28:25

your regulars is the serious alcoholics.

Speaker: 1:28:28

Yeah. No, I, you know, I realized when I was in the bar in music industry that like, I was literally catering to alcoholics and drug addicts.

Speaker 2: 1:28:37

Right.

Speaker: 1:28:37

And that was, and you know, and yeah, I was, I was real cool to those people. Right. You know.

Speaker 2: 1:28:42

Well, and, and you were at least on the edge of being an alcoholic probably too. Oh, perhaps beyond, no,

Speaker: 1:28:47

I was, I was far over the edge

Speaker 2: 1:28:49

and did talk to me about that. Like did you just, did you do a 12 step or anything like that? Did you just muscle it through, got outta the lifestyle and it left you alone? Like, talk to me about that a little bit. No,

Speaker: 1:28:59

um, I got out of that lifestyle and I cleaned myself up and I. I realized that that moderation wa you know, I, that was, that was when I learned a lot more about moderation. Okay. And I definitely had quite a few times in my life where I've forgotten about moderation, um, since

Speaker 2: 1:29:17

Fair. And you'd learned that lesson before also. But yeah. It was easy to forget and now I

Speaker: 1:29:21

can recognize it a lot easier. Okay. Yeah. Um, you know, like this last summer, like we were going out a lot and I was, I was drinking a lot. And so, you know, and I was like, okay, wait, hold on. You kind of falling back. Tap the breaks again. Yeah. Falling back into an old pattern. But like, I mean, I like the way that, um, alcohol is taste. Yeah. And if I'm drinking it for the flavor, then that's one thing.

Speaker 2: 1:29:40

Well, and I like what it does to me just a little bit. Yeah. You know, when it's just a little bit, it's pretty nice. Yeah. You know, when, when I can have a bourbon and sit and talk to my new friend John, you know, that's kinda cool.

Speaker: 1:29:49

Boy, do I hate what it does to me the next day. Yeah. And that's, that's one of my biggest problems is, is, is yapping yapping too much when I'm drunk and then feeling like crap the next day. Yeah. And it affecting my, my work ethic. And that's where it bothers me. And I can't let that those two interfere. Interfere anymore. And so kudos

Speaker 2: 1:30:10

to my, uh, to my dad who, uh, I had no curfew when I was a kid growing up. It was North Dakota and we were kind of libertine kind of family anyway. Sure. And, uh, you can get rid of the ones that are done if you like, or whatever they can hide. Um, but when I stayed up until. Two o'clock in the morning partying as a 15 or 16-year-old, you know? Yeah. Then we started an hour earlier farming. Oh, the next day. Yeah. So you did that. See, like that was kind of, and he didn't say anything, but that was just like, I knew if I came home really late, there was no, you know, nothing said about it, but we were gonna start earlier next day. Yeah. You

Speaker: 1:30:52

get, you'd get one, two hours of sleep. Something like that. Even if it was

Speaker 2: 1:30:54

just changing shovels on the digger or something before we went out harvesting.

Speaker: 1:30:58

Boy, my mom did that same shit to me, but it was, it was, it was very different. She, uh, she would vacuum right next to my bedroom. And she would like at 7:00 AM fucking vacuum into the door. Ally bumped the door and I bumped the

Speaker 2: 1:31:15

door again and I bumped the door again. Yeah. Where, where did your mom come from? And your dad by the way?

Speaker: 1:31:18

Uh, my mom. My mom came from my grandparents, so I know Midwest, or girl. My mom came, yeah, she was actually, she was born in California, then moved to Minnesota and my dad was born in Nebraska and then his family moved to Minnesota. Okay. They met in Minnesota and then neither one of them wanted to be there. Right. Um, so they they created the life of moving around. Yeah. Yeah. Quite bit. And your dad split up, was

Speaker 2: 1:31:47

upwardly mobile strong in sales initially, and then eventually into corporate management kind of things. Yes. He, which is also still strong in sales probably.

Speaker: 1:31:55

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And he was a, he was a West Point graduate, had a couple of master's degrees in business and he was, he was very, very, very smart guy. Yeah. Sounds like it. Who interviewed really well. Um, and, uh, then, well, we moved around a lot. Didn't have performed. Yeah. Yeah. No, he performed. He just, uh, he was, he was kind of mean, you know. Gotcha. And could

Speaker 2: 1:32:16

be, wasn't the kind of boss that everybody loved as much? No,

Speaker: 1:32:19

he wouldn't, he wouldn't, he wouldn't do well in, in today's society. Right. All these snowflakes would be melting on him all over the place and filing lawsuits and stuff. Oh

Speaker 2: 1:32:27

boy. He would. And was it just you and your brother, or was there more siblings too?

Speaker: 1:32:30

Uh, it was just me and my brother. Uh, I have a stepbrother. Okay. Uh, Dominic, he lives in Florida. He's an attorney in Florida. My, my blood brother Mark, he is, um, a teacher and a musician in Taipei, Taiwan. Oh, wow. Right now, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:32:47

That's probably a whole nother story, but

Speaker: 1:32:49

long, long story without, we got one more ping pong question. Alright. Do you need the number?

Speaker 2: 1:32:54

I don't think so. Oh, yeah. Here it is. Number 18. If you had to pick a smell to describe your personality, what smell would it be?

Speaker: 1:33:07

Hmm.

Speaker 2: 1:33:09

Um, or you could use a smell or flavor if you prefer.

Speaker: 1:33:12

It'd probably be hot chocolate.

Speaker 2: 1:33:14

Okay. The smell of hot chocolate. Okay.

Speaker: 1:33:17

I, I don't know why it's hot Chocolate and lavender are my two favorite smells. Um, and

Speaker 2: 1:33:23

why is that affixed to your personality? I guess it makes you feel warm and cozy kind of, or something. I don't know. Yeah.

Speaker: 1:33:30

I, I, I, I don't know. Probably because the hot chocolate is like, it's just cold. Like it's something that's great when it's too cold and it also tastes wonderful. So like, it has like this like double function. It's multiple usages kind of function of warming and taste and flavor. Okay. All right. And then lavender because it chills you out. And that's, I don't know that that fits my personality at all whatsoever. Yeah. But it definitely fits my favorite smell. I had a hold on the question. If you

Speaker 2: 1:33:59

had to pick a smell that fits your personality, personality, not your favorite smells, but a smell that fits your personality.

Speaker: 1:34:05

Oh yeah. It would probably be armpit sweat. Then. That's your work. Uh, ethic.

Speaker 2: 1:34:13

I was thinking hot chocolate. If, if you were like a black fellow. Uh, hey, hot chocolate. Oh

Speaker: 1:34:19

yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, that'd be sexual chocolate. Yeah. Um,

Speaker 2: 1:34:25

let's see. Tootie fruity. Is that the smell? What's yours? A smell that would fit my personality. Yeah. I would say, um. Yeah. Maybe green chili.

Speaker 4: 1:34:40

Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:34:41

Why a little spicy? A little different. You know, the first time I had green chili I was like, that's amazing. Yeah. You know, and it'll shoot right through you. Sometimes I do that with my questions. Alright. I don't know. This is all off the cuff, by the way. I like

Speaker 4: 1:34:59

the second part better.

Speaker 2: 1:35:04

Um, if you're ready, I'm ready, uh, to jump into the loco experience.

Speaker 4: 1:35:10

Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:35:10

Let's do it. That is, uh, the craziest story from your whole life that you're willing to share with our listeners, including your future clients and past clients and your wife.

Speaker: 1:35:23

All right.

Speaker 2: 1:35:23

And your dog. Maybe

Speaker: 1:35:25

My craziest story. Well, I told one of them. I decided to, I got fired from my job and I moved to Alaska. Yeah. Was a fisherman. And your girl girlfriend broke up with you too? Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:35:38

No, actually that was the time you broke up with her. No, that was, uh, she broke up up with me. Alright.

Speaker: 1:35:42

Yeah. Um, she, she moved to Germany and then broke up with me for a German guy. Remember

Speaker 2: 1:35:48

when it was like you could go fishing in Alaska, you could sell encyclopedias or like knives or something. There was like a few kind of crappy jobs that anybody could get anytime and you may or may not make a bunch of money. Come home from a summer with a pile of money in your

Speaker: 1:36:05

pocket. Yeah. It's like Cutco, right? Yeah. Cutco was one, you know, Cutco when

Speaker 2: 1:36:09

I was, I'm a little older. I'm 51. Fishing oil. For me it was still selling encyclopedias.

Speaker: 1:36:13

Encyclopedia. Okay. Yeah. That was, that was a little bit past. Yeah. Yeah. They were, they were already their way out in my twenties. Yeah. And then there was, uh, there was oil, there was

Speaker 2: 1:36:22

like magazine sales kind of stuff too, but,

Speaker: 1:36:25

well, the other, the other one that was when I was in my twenties was going to Northern California and trimming pot. Oh, right. Yeah. See that wasn't, that was a huge one. I was already grown up in a real big boy job by then. That was a huge one when, when I was in my twenties. Yeah. That a lot of people would go out there. Yeah. Spend

Speaker 2: 1:36:43

three months out there, come, come back with 20 grand in their pocket

Speaker: 1:36:45

and like three, four pounds of pot now was worth another$20,000. Right.

Speaker 2: 1:36:50

If you're willing to take the risk. Yeah. And, and, and

Speaker: 1:36:53

I mean, sure, like that may have only added up to like 40 grand in the end, but like was a time a lot. 40 grand. That was an annual salary. Yeah. When I

Speaker 2: 1:37:00

moved here, I think my, my salary was like 28,000, you know, so that's, that was a lot. God, when I moved here, or 32, I don't know.

Speaker: 1:37:06

When I moved here, I worked at the Olive Garden waiting tables. And they gave me$500 for a moving bonus. Oh, nice. And I thought it was huge. Right. Like I probably, that's probably like, careful. I can give you, I mean, yeah. I, I kind of like playing with them, but you can, if you want, um, some new ones you could play with. Well, here, let's do one more question actually. Sure. Why not? And then we'll get into story

Speaker 2: 1:37:33

look of experience. But yeah. Warm, a warm

Speaker: 1:37:34

up. Number three.

Speaker 2: 1:37:39

How do you approach work life balance? Mr. Smells like pit, sweat, arm

Speaker: 1:37:43

pit sweat. Um, I don't right now, just, uh, as a, um,

Speaker 2: 1:37:49

cleaned up before I came to the podcast.

Speaker: 1:37:51

Yeah. Uh, so I haven't been very good at that, especially in the last few years. And I'm trying to get better at that. And that's part of me, uh, paying people to do some of the mm-hmm. The jobs that like Erica and try to minimize your scope, Joey and Yeah. I'm, I'm trying to hand off a little bit more. Um, and it's been, it's, it's difficult, especially in the real estate world.

Speaker 2: 1:38:17

Yeah. You gotta really like Joey to pass your residential, first time home buyer referrals to him.'cause you wanna make sure they're served very excellently.

Speaker: 1:38:24

Right. And unfortunately he's not quite there yet. But, um, yeah, we've got, we've got some things where he's, he's going out and he's doing some of the work and he's helping out. But, um,

Speaker 2: 1:38:35

well, and you're not there yet either.

Speaker: 1:38:36

What, what.

Speaker 2: 1:38:38

Like,'cause you're not there from a comfort level yet to be able to hand it off. Yeah. No,

Speaker: 1:38:42

no, no. I'm wasting too much of

Speaker 2: 1:38:44

this. But, I mean, but eventually freak. Yeah. But eventually you're gonna have to get to a place where you're comfortable when a residential referral comes in and it's this certain demographic that it just goes to Joey or one of the other Ns.

Speaker: 1:38:56

I mean, I'll tell you what, I hope that that comfort starts on Wednesday, right? Because we're gonna Costa Rica, maybe it's happening, but, um, that's, that's part of

Speaker 2: 1:39:05

building a team though too. Right? Let's, so your customers can actually be served when you're gone.

Speaker: 1:39:09

Yeah. Um, I have, I've also, I've, I've said, I've passed on a few things Really? Really? Yeah. Leading

Speaker 2: 1:39:15

up to this trip.

Speaker: 1:39:17

Um, not just that, but this year Oh, just

Speaker 2: 1:39:19

I got too much. Yeah. I've got too much

Speaker: 1:39:21

on my plate and I, I'll refer it out to somebody else who I know and, and know and trust. Sure. Um, and so I've, I've done that a little bit and that's fine. Yeah. And unfortunately, and I hope none of you're watching, but I'm sorry, but most of those didn't turn into deals anyways. Um,

Speaker 2: 1:39:40

yeah. They were kind of, well, sometimes you have to have a sniff for what's a waste of your time.

Speaker: 1:39:44

Right. And that wasn't why I handed'em off, but like, it was, it was, I knew that they were gonna be difficult clients to work with. Yeah. And I'm sure maybe in the next like year or so, those clients will buy something. Sure. But you know, uh, yeah. Knowing, knowing. If somebody means it or they don't. Um, but there's sometimes there's a lot of guys out there that just wanna waste your time so that they look cool, you know, it's tough.

Speaker 2: 1:40:08

They can tell their girlfriend, yeah, I'm looking for another investment property.

Speaker: 1:40:10

Right. Yeah. No, it's like, God, man, you're good at this. I could

Speaker 2: 1:40:16

imagine a lot of different jobs. Yeah. I dunno which one I wanna work at. Um, cool. Well, uh, okay, so the local experience, craziest, I cut you off earlier. Craziest, craziest experience story

Speaker: 1:40:26

that I've got. So I, um, fell in the ocean in the middle of winter.

Speaker 2: 1:40:32

Okay.

Speaker: 1:40:33

In the bearing sea.

Speaker 2: 1:40:34

Oh shit. Um, all right, this is on that first Crabber with the Russian dude or another, your second trip back. Yes. Yes. Same guy. Anyway, crab.

Speaker: 1:40:41

Yeah, same, same boat. Um, I fell over, I don't remember any of it really.

Speaker 2: 1:40:46

Like, not even what led up to falling over?

Speaker: 1:40:48

No. Uh, the guys on my crew saved me. Um, I was on the deck.

Speaker 2: 1:40:55

What's that look like? Saving you from that? Like, that's not easy task. Right. That's freaking super dangerous too. I

Speaker: 1:41:00

mean, these dudes were pretty, they were pretty strong guys. Okay. So they were, they were tough guys. They were fishermen, fishing. They didn't have to go send a boat

Speaker 2: 1:41:06

out into the water to get you, they were able to grab you somehow and pull you up or something. No, they, I

Speaker: 1:41:09

mean, you know, uh, life ran, um, okay. Kind thing. We, oddly enough, we never really talked about it and I don't have any contact with these guys.

Speaker 2: 1:41:18

Okay. Wow. Yeah. But, uh, starting where the memories restart.

Speaker: 1:41:22

So I was on the, I was on the, the deck of the boat. It was not even that bad of a night out. It was cold. Um, but it was dark and, well, actually, I don't even think it was night yet. It was probably like four in the afternoon, you know, kind of thing. Oh, right. But it's dark all day anyway. Yeah. It gets dark. It gets dark. It you only have like a few hours of light. Yeah, yeah. In the, in the winter. Yeah. Our last exchange

Speaker 2: 1:41:45

student was from Finland, and they, at the, in the depth of winter, it's, um, 24, 24 to 10 to two for them. Oh, okay. So they get, kind of get, you know, it starts to gray up at 10:00 AM and it goes back to gray at 2:00 PM Yeah,

Speaker: 1:41:58

pretty similar. Um, but then after

Speaker 2: 1:42:00

three o'clock it's dark as hell.

Speaker: 1:42:01

Yeah. We, yeah, I was in, I was in. At this point, I wasn't in like the most southern Alaska, but I was like South Alaska. Um, which yeah, you have, you have a little bit of light. Yeah. You know, four hour, days, whatever. Yeah. But anyhow, um, yeah. So you're, I was in the shower all of a sudden. I was naked. Um,

Speaker 2: 1:42:22

oh.

Speaker: 1:42:22

And everything hurt. They're trying to warm you up. Yeah. And it burned ding and it hurt so much and I didn't know what I was doing there.

Speaker 2: 1:42:30

Yeah.

Speaker: 1:42:30

Um,

Speaker 2: 1:42:31

your skin, just your hands. I've gotten my hands pretty damn cold, you know? Yeah. It hurts so much as it's warming. I

Speaker: 1:42:37

think I was out of it for a little bit and I was starting to come back, and then I was starting to get that feeling back. And you know how it hurts when you start to get warm again? Yeah. When you're real cold, like, oh my God. It felt like that everywhere. And then it felt like that for like, for, for at least a week. And then everything on my body just hurt for a couple more weeks.

Speaker 2: 1:42:57

Oh wow. Yeah. Were you working still? Um. You were in recovery basically there was two

Speaker: 1:43:04

days. Two days where really all well, so that I was, I was, it was the second year that I was there, but everybody from the crew the first year had left the boat and I was the only longstanding one. And so I was actually like, I was kind of like, hit Johnny next time I was the deck boss. Right. Just by default. Wow. Not because of experience or anything. Right. Just because I was the only one that had worked on the boat the year before. Wow. Um, and so I just operated the crane and I mean, oh man, it was, it sucked. Um, for about a, about three weeks, almost a month. Wow. Yeah. So you

Speaker 2: 1:43:36

were inches from death by the time you got out of there. Yeah. Had to have been if it took you three weeks to recover from it. Yeah. You must have been far.

Speaker: 1:43:43

I was. I was, I was, I was messed up. And I mean, I'm sure that if I probably like went to a hospital or something like that, like maybe it would've been easier a psychologist faster. Oh yeah. As a psychologist. Sure. Actually I couldn't. Well, I'm sure if you haven't talked to a therapist

Speaker 2: 1:43:57

about this, you probably should. Uh,

Speaker: 1:43:59

but yeah. Um, no, I just, I just have my friends and, you know, random dudes at bars to talk to about their songs. Rumor. Right. Uh, but yeah, that was Monday.

Speaker 2: 1:44:07

Or no, what's her name? Maybe? Maybe. Yeah.

Speaker: 1:44:10

Maybe knows the small story. Maybe. Maybe. Doesn't get to hear the bad story. She only gets the good stuff. That's good. Maybe's the dog. Just to remind everybody.

Speaker 2: 1:44:17

Yeah. True.

Speaker: 1:44:17

But, um, what about your craziest story? Let me hear yours.

Speaker 2: 1:44:21

Oh, you know, I've shared a few. Um, okay, here's one for you to stay in the cold theme. Um. With my extra financial aid money from my first semester, I bought a Sony stereo with detachable speakers when that was super cool. Sure. Kind of a bumper. The next semester I bought a, uh, Honda, uh, CX 500 motorcycle.

Speaker 4: 1:44:45

Cool.

Speaker 2: 1:44:46

So this is like the extra financial aid money I got above and beyond what I really need, kind of. Uh, it was loans I'm sure, but whatever. Um, and then the third semester, so the fall of my, my second year of college I bought a 1993 Arctic Cat Pantera.

Speaker 4: 1:45:02

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:45:03

Um, which had the big 500 cc engine and it had been ringed and board and was set up for track racing. You know, it's a random

Speaker: 1:45:10

thing is that my dad made the dashboards. Oh really? That's awesome. That's like one of, that's awesome. Well, maybe not the Pantera, but like he for Arctic Cat. And so this was

Speaker 2: 1:45:18

the days like when snowmobiles, there was a few years where snowmobiles had amazing engines, but terrible suspension. Yeah. I was right in the early days of that kind of, uh, and I didn't really know what I was doing, but I had a bunch of friends from home from Central North Dakota that had gotten into snowmobile and even before,'cause their dads had money when I was in high school and we didn't have any money for that kind of stuff, but thank you. Pell Grants and financial aid. Right. You know, and scholarships and so I had extra money, so I bought this snowmobile and it was about as fast as any of there, like, let's see, it was a. It must've been like 88 or something like that. And this was like 95 by this point. So the, the good sleds had a lot better suspension by that point, but I was just as fast. Anyway, we're riding one night and we're doing, you know, basically a poker run, a, a teenager poker run.'cause you got four different kids's houses where there's booze and you can hang out and stuff. And so we pop into them with our group of six snowmobiles or something, and I'm cruising probably like 80 miles an hour. And in Minnesota there's snow all over the place. In North Dakota, it's like in the ditches and then lots of snow at the end of the shelter belt. Okay. Right. Because the wind blows and then it forms this huge drift that starts at 14 feet high by the trees. Right. And then it goes slowly down to like whatever, a little tiny thing. And so I'm going fast riding down this ditch and the shelter bed and I'm not experienced and I want to, I go around my friend Donnie, and I'm passing him, he's going like 65, 70 miles an hour and I'm going 80. So I pass him. And then I see once I come out of this snow drift that where he's at is like a really fun, like three foot, slightly angled snow drift to jump over. Where I'm going is like a seven foot tall, very angled snowdrift to go over. Yeah. And I hit that thing going about 80 miles an hour. Oh, Jesus. And the snowmobile, tumbled, tumbled, tumbled and somehow landed on its track, uh, and was still running. Oh. And I, they told me I looked like Gumby, like just flying through the air and just like my limbs and hands and stuff, hitting the snow, but doing like cartwheels Yeah. Effectively for like a hundred yards and not a scratch on me. Not a broken bone, not a sprained ankle, nothing. And, uh, lucky. Totally lucky. Yeah. I could have broke my neck easily. Could have broke my neck. Um, and I hadn't even thought about that story except for the cold, maybe like Sure. Okay. What's a cold story I've got?

Speaker: 1:47:56

Okay, hold on. I got one like that too. All right, let's hear it. My buddy Scotty, his dad was the groundskeeper of, uh, of a golf course in Long Island, New York. Okay. And we would, like, every weekend we would, we would, we would always like race the golf course run, basically. Yeah. And, you know,'cause they all have the governors on'em. Yeah. So like, you gotta like put it in neutral. You gotta get that too. You can hold up the thing and hold

Speaker 2: 1:48:18

the governor. Yeah,

Speaker: 1:48:20

yeah, yeah. But so we were on the, the utility ones. Right. And we were, they were, they were like the truck bed ones, bed golf carts. So we're racing down a hill. Right. And governor

Speaker 2: 1:48:31

off.

Speaker: 1:48:33

We're also tripping on acid. Okay. And so we're, we're going down, I'm in the back, I'm in the truck bed of it, and we're winning. And I look, or I turn back and I see the guys, and one, the guy who's behind us is like, dude, something like this. And then all of a sudden, like it was because there was a big curve,

Speaker 2: 1:48:53

right? And

Speaker: 1:48:54

we didn't realize it. So turns slides, I fly out of the, the back of the golf cart. Whoa. Right? And I land and then I get up and I'm like, man, you guys like, that was crazy. And they're all, all my friends are like over at the bush looking at me and they're like, dude, are you okay? Are you all right? And I'm like, Hey, I'm right here. Right? I was like, out of my body for second. Right? You had out of body experience almost. And then I look down and I look at myself, and then I go back into myself, and then I realize I'm laying in a huge bush of poison ivy. So, and I'm like crazy allergic to poison ivy. Oh gosh. So I get up and we, we get back together and I'm, I'm dinged up pretty good, but like, you know, it's just scrapes and, and whatnot. Yeah. Except for the fact that I got scraped and I got poison ivy and scraped. Oh, you almost

Speaker 2: 1:49:48

like get sepsis or something.

Speaker: 1:49:50

I was in real bad shape. Wow. After that. Wow. And uh, yeah. And so then coming off of that with

Speaker 2: 1:49:58

Oh, plus you're tripping all of that. Gotta go to the emergency room and your trip.

Speaker: 1:50:01

Oh no, I didn't, I didn't go to the, we didn't, didn't to the emergency, just, I just suffered through it and Oh damn. Oh my gosh. That was such an awful, awful, awful experience. Yeah. See, my life is, might have been one of the last times I ever did this stuff. My life is

Speaker 2: 1:50:11

mostly about coming out unscathed from seemingly Yeah. Stupid circumstances that should have killed me.

Speaker: 1:50:17

Yeah. I mean, most of these times, like, it might have hurt for a while afterwards.

Speaker 2: 1:50:22

Not

Speaker: 1:50:22

me.

Speaker 2: 1:50:23

I made it, I remember like, I can see the video of me seeing that thing and being like, oh, I'm fucked. Yeah. And then flying through the air, you'll see lots of different views. Headlights are all over the place. No. You know. Ah. And then being like, huh. Snowmobile landed on its track. It's still running. Yeah. And walking over there and my friends are all riding up going, what the fuck

Speaker 5: 1:50:45

are

Speaker: 1:50:45

you? Okay, man.

Speaker 2: 1:50:47

Anyway,

Speaker: 1:50:48

I'm glad you made it. I'm too, I'm glad you and yeah, no broken. See, I never, like, I didn't ever break bones. I just had like, I just had like things that hurt for a little while. Well, and

Speaker 2: 1:50:59

you got the garlic and onion allergy thing too. Oh yeah. Garlic and onion

Speaker: 1:51:02

allergy is the worst. And that's new. Oh. Oh man. Imagine like finding out you're allergic to your two favorite foods is like,

Speaker 2: 1:51:09

so did you overdo it, do you think?

Speaker: 1:51:11

I don't know. That's what Sarah says. No,

Speaker 2: 1:51:15

I've, I've experienced that before a little bit. Like the first time I grew my own weed in the backyard and I smoked too much of it. I like it. I kind of, I think, I feel like I've kind of didn't do myself physically any good. You know? I had some allergic to it, so now that I'm moderating

Speaker 4: 1:51:31

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:51:31

You know, kinda like you were talking, uh, then it's okay, you know?

Speaker: 1:51:35

Yeah. Um, I, um, I had a funny experience a couple weeks ago. I had a wisdom tooth removed and, uh, I, I made a bunch of oil'cause I was like, I was like, Hey, well, you know, like I don't want to take pain pills, so I'm gonna make a bunch of pot oil. Oh. So I took, made it a little too strong. Did you Dude? So strong. And I took like a half of a shot glass of it. Oh shit. And I thought, like I didn't, I thought it was gonna be weak. Oh my fuck. It was such a, it was such a nightmare for a while. Have you ever

Speaker 2: 1:52:12

overdosed yourself on weed before?

Speaker: 1:52:13

I mean, I think I did that to, right? Yeah. Yeah. But like, I, I was like, so it was

Speaker 2: 1:52:17

equivalent of like 400 milligrams or some bologna, few eating edibles. I

Speaker: 1:52:21

mean, probably more like 4,000. God, like, like it was crazy. And I had like this stitch in my, in my thing, right? Yeah. And so in my, in my mouth, and I'm like paranoid about that. I'm like, I'm gonna mess this up. And like,

Speaker 2: 1:52:35

you can't see it or anything? No.

Speaker: 1:52:37

And I, oh

Speaker 2: 1:52:38

man.

Speaker: 1:52:38

Oh my gosh. It was so, it was, it was so bad. So the kids, the lesson

Speaker 2: 1:52:42

here is always start small, small. Don't ever do a half a shot of anything. I totally thought I was starting small. Oh, last opportunity. Um, that's the infinity, um, barrel. And we can do a little wee taste, but I just poured some, it's got gin in it. It's got tequila in it. Let's, it's got bourbon, whatever. Let's do it. All right. I'll, I'll grab it real quick. Sounds great. Yeah.

Speaker: 1:53:07

Oh yeah. Have special glasses for it.

Speaker 2: 1:53:10

No, it sucks. What'd you call it? The infinity barrel. Infinity. So every, every time I get a new, um, bottle of whiskey for the podcast operation, I put a half a shot or maybe a shot into this bottle. So it's a mix of everything that's been. Consumed in this podcast studio. Oops. That's more for Let's go big. Also, I'll just give you part. Oh, okay. I was gonna say, I don't wanna go big or I give you a little more still. Wait, wait, wait. We, no, it's all good. So this is the infinity shot. We do a shot. Yeah. We not set. Well, we could, we can do a tasting notes first and then shoot it maybe. Okay. Let's do that. Okay. Um, I mean, if, if we've learned anything from my last

Speaker: 1:53:47

story

Speaker 2: 1:53:54

and I feel like you can, there is some scotch in there. There's just a little bit of one scotch is in there. I,

Speaker: 1:53:59

I, I taste like scotch and gin.

Speaker 2: 1:54:03

I know the gin is, the gin can't be more than like 5% by now.

Speaker: 1:54:07

Okay. Like, oh. But it carries the most,

Speaker 2: 1:54:10

it's the biggest swinger out of all those.

Speaker: 1:54:14

Okay. I'm gonna do another taste.

Speaker 2: 1:54:15

I can't taste much tequila anymore.

Speaker: 1:54:18

I don't taste any tequila. I don't taste te tequila. I literally only taste like, I've

Speaker 2: 1:54:24

honestly not been drinking nearly as much tequila in the podcast studio the last few months. Well, next

Speaker: 1:54:30

time I'll bring my favorite bottle.

Speaker 2: 1:54:32

Okay. I like it. Um,

Speaker: 1:54:34

I like it. It's, it's good. It started right? You know what it started tastes like to me. Um. Do, do you know Wiz Cal local company? Yeah, I just

Speaker 2: 1:54:42

had those guys on, actually. That's, uh,

Speaker: 1:54:43

who? Justin and Joel.

Speaker 2: 1:54:44

Uh, Joel and Jess. Oh, Jess, yeah. Jess Grease.

Speaker: 1:54:48

Yeah. Yeah, Jess is my attorney. Yeah. So, uh, business attorney.

Speaker 2: 1:54:54

So yeah. Yeah. We, we, I, I was, that was the most, uh, drinky I got because they brought four different bottles to try. Plus we did the Infinity shot. No kidding. I went straight from here to, uh, dinner with a good friend. Oh, wow. Family.

Speaker: 1:55:09

Yeah. Joe's uh, Joe's like a brother to me now. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, uh,

Speaker 2: 1:55:13

yeah, he's our long time member, Abby, who obviously, you know, uh, so Abby's been a member since not as well as Jill before 2020. Oh, cool. And uh, so yeah, the two of them just, oh, they're engaged now. Oh, AB was an actual

Speaker: 1:55:24

member of Loco. Yeah. Yeah. Abby's been a member'cause so

Speaker 2: 1:55:27

like, when there weren't any weddings in 2020 and all the government buildings and other places shut us out, she allowed Loko think tank chapters to meet in her conference room down there and stuff.'cause we're a bunch of libertarian crazy people that aren't scared of your manufactured bugs. You Chinese, it's just wanna talk about that season?

Speaker: 1:55:45

Yeah, I do. Yeah, let's do it. Let's talk about that. All right. Tell me about

Speaker 2: 1:55:48

it.

Speaker: 1:55:48

Tell me, tell me, okay, so how did you, how did you feel going into it?

Speaker 2: 1:55:53

Um,

Speaker: 1:55:56

and then how did you, how did you feel

Speaker 2: 1:55:58

once you'd survived? Somebody cooked this thing up? Yeah. I was never very scared because I read the data right away that said basically, if you're less than. 50, you're probably fine. Yeah. If you're less than 20, you'd be a fool to take some kind of a fast tracked solution for this. Um, and I expressed like a week before Trump posted the, I hope the, uh, cure isn't worse than the poison or worse than the disease. Mm-hmm. I posted that effectively on my LinkedIn Yeah. And said, you know, that the cure that they're applying here is probably worse than letting it rip through. Yeah. And moving on with life.'cause economically it's gonna fucking suck to put the government in a bunch of debt. Shut down all these businesses, especially small businesses, while you let the big businesses stay open and sell shit online. Yeah. Assholes. Um, and so that was my position was, uh, a staunch libertarian and a staunch advocate for small business and the rights of people in particular, nurses that already got sick and got healthy to not be fired for making choices. So that was, I was always, and I, and I respected my friends that left their groceries in the back of the car for a day before they brought them in so they didn't have to touch the plastic bags anymore and stuff. Stuff. Oh yeah. What the fuck was that? I remember that shit. I mean, I, I've got a, a good friend still that took that approach, right? Like Yeah. Him and especially his wife at that time were super, super, the other side of the spectrum.

Speaker 4: 1:57:25

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:57:25

But before there was a spectrum that developed. Right. I'm my, for my, so for me, risky is a different definition than it is for other people. I have a different. Tolerance for risks than a lot of people. If he's Tell me 1% chance you're gonna die. I'm like, oh. So 99% chance I'm not. Yeah. You know?

Speaker: 1:57:44

Well, I personally, I take zero risks in life. Yeah. So

Speaker 2: 1:57:48

that's fine. And so what was your approach? My approach,

Speaker: 1:57:51

um, in

Speaker 2: 1:57:52

that time? Yeah. How did you, did mine certainly evolved over time.

Speaker: 1:57:56

I've had COVID eight times. Mm. So how many

Speaker 2: 1:57:59

times you went back X?

Speaker: 1:58:00

Uh, I did twice. Okay. But I, my, my father was dying. Um, well, and plus I had to in order to go visit him, and I would not have it because the vaccine made me feel so much worse than, yeah. Than having COVID. Like, I literally, well

Speaker 2: 1:58:17

my friend died, my freaking 44-year-old friend died after getting his mandatory shot from working for Microsoft. Oh.

Speaker: 1:58:24

He definitely shot my buddy's friend,

Speaker 2: 1:58:25

dad friends, or my friend's dad died.

Speaker: 1:58:28

I've had three, I've had 360 people that I've known. Pe three people I knew died from COVID. He

Speaker 2: 1:58:33

didn't die from the shot. He died from a heart attack a week after he took the shot. I mean, uh, super healthy guy. Yeah. What are the chances,

Speaker: 1:58:42

right? Yeah. It's

Speaker 2: 1:58:42

weird. Um, no. Um, so anyway, keep going.

Speaker: 1:58:45

I had a friend, he passed away from CID. He had asthma. He had really bad asthma. Yeah. Um, I had another friend whose mom passed. She was.

Speaker 2: 1:58:56

Yeah. So your control group situation was a lot different. She was, she was foot out the door though. Yeah. Like, I mean, she was, she wasn't doing well. My, my aunt just about passed and then

Speaker: 1:59:04

we had another friend, we had another, my wife's uncle passed from it, but he was, I mean, ready to go to, he was half our height and twice our weight. Right. So, you know,

Speaker 2: 1:59:17

I mean, those were the biggest things. If you were heavily overweight or if you were really old and probably, well, and he was also, and probably also, nature should have already taken you. Yeah. He was 70. Like in Le County, the median age of death was like 84. Yeah. For the first like eight months. Yeah. Well,

Speaker: 1:59:33

but we live in a healthier county than True. Most. Yeah. Fair. Um, like, statistically, like yeah. In Alabama, the 30 year

Speaker 2: 1:59:40

olds are dropping like flies'cause they're a bunch of heavies, you know? Yeah.

Speaker: 1:59:43

And they, well they also, they eat nothing but shit. Right. You know? Right. Shitty food.

Speaker 2: 1:59:48

Yeah. Not actual shit. Not actual, just to clarify. Nothing against those southern folk for eating shit that do, but we don't really believe those rumors.

Speaker: 2:00:00

Let's take a turn.

Speaker 2: 2:00:03

So it goes, Ava said we were good until six. Ted, it's 6 27. Oh, hey. Um, do you want to, he wants to go home here. Here's John Pauley. BBP Realty, BBP Realty 9 7 0 3 0 8 6 6 6 2. A 6, 6, 6 number there too.

Speaker: 2:00:20

I got it actually the day after I got home from fishing. So Joel,

Speaker 2: 2:00:25

Joel sold his soul to the devil's advocate. Jess, uh, was his crazy experience from a, a music festival. Oh, really? Yeah. So that he could open a spirit and distilling company.

Speaker: 2:00:36

Okay.

Speaker 2: 2:00:37

I mean, he didn't sell it to the devil. He sold it to the devil's advocate.

Speaker: 2:00:40

Yeah, no, I, um, I, uh, anyway, I just, he was the winner. I worked in rock and roll for a long time and they actually, they gave me, so the, the, when I was getting my phone hooked up, they gave me an option. They said, well, do you want this number, this number four 20 Oh, or 6 6 6 2? And I was like, huh. I mean, I came back here on literally on 6, 6, 6. I was like, so how about 6, 6, 6 2? Yeah,

Speaker 2: 2:01:08

I dig

Speaker: 2:01:09

it. And um, that was actually how I got it. But it is, yeah, it,

Speaker 2: 2:01:15

have you been back to church since the Gospel Church in North Carolina, by the way.

Speaker: 2:01:19

Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My, my father was a pastor.

Speaker 2: 2:01:22

Oh, wow. Um, oh, interesting. In addition to his corporate career. Yeah. After or after he washed outta that, when

Speaker: 2:01:27

he retired, he became a pastor. Pastor. My, uh, my a mean pastor. Or did

Speaker 2: 2:01:32

he get nicer after a while? Mm. Still mean

Speaker: 2:01:36

Pastor Dick. So you, his name is Richard. He went by Dick and he was Pastor Dick. Okay. Um, God bless. You're still a dad. Um, but, uh, yes, I have been, I, um, I'm not, I'm, I'm not active in a church. Um, I, but you also, I believe in a lot, respect

Speaker 2: 2:01:58

them. Appreciate them.

Speaker: 2:01:59

I believe, I believe in a lot. I believe You think Jesus is cool. I think Jesus is way badass. Right. I'm just afraid of some of his followers. True. Also. So would you like to His American followers mostly? No, I can't do it.

Speaker 2: 2:02:13

The, the most terrible joke that I know. Uh, I was reminded of it this last weekend and I can't say it on here'cause Jill would never forgive me if I say it in a public forum, but I'll tell you after we get off there.

Speaker 4: 2:02:23

Okay?

Speaker 2: 2:02:23

Okay. Thanks John. It's been fun. Thanks a luck. Bye. Bye for now.